Latest Chang-Rae Lee Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Obviously loss of family is huge and critical, but I think really it's more about losing a sense of family. The horror of that kind of incompleteness. Writing this book, I tried not to think about my father, which does no one any good fictionally. I did try to imagine not just the horror of that moment, but the horror of having witnessed it, and the lifelong void. And I think that's what's so frightening.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Father, Book, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

• Historical novels are about costumery. I think that's the magic and mystery of fiction. I don't want to write historical fiction but I do want the story to have the feel of history. There's a difference.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Writing, Thinking, Historical Novels

  Source: therumpus.net

• There is secrecy and betrayal but that's more part and parcel of the kind of anguish that the people go through. And maybe that's modes of survival, rather than modes of consciousness.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Betrayal, People, Survival

  Source: therumpus.net

• I think because of these big issues of life and death that maybe sex feels like a crass question. But for Christ sake, this is a book that is so interested in an elemental human condition. And one of the ideas about surrender is an erotic surrender, too. These folks are surrendered by destiny; they surrender to each other in certain moments, but there is a lot of erotic surrender.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Sex, Book, Destiny

  Source: therumpus.net

• I'm more interested in the psychic intricacies that they build up and try to run away from, and how they self-construct. A lot of my work is about self-construction. Here, it's those folks who are deeply wounded and bewildered. They're not just victims of trauma; they've been shaken so forcefully that they don't quite know how or where to stand.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Running, Self, Psychics

  Source: therumpus.net

• I think their pasts are treated with a voice that sees their role as those of innocents. That's reflected in the past time sequences. They're less "written."

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Past, Thinking, Voice

  Source: therumpus.net

• When I'm describing wartime activities or violence I don't want to be too ornate, to prettify the picture. Once we trace them to the present, the prose becomes denser.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Want, Violence, Wartime

  Source: therumpus.net

• By definition it uses and plays and delights in time. It delights in the interlacing of chronologies and the consequences of that interlacing. And those have personal and psychological expressions in a character. Aside from other issues of writing, psychological characterization is what narrative can do best.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Writing, Character, Expression

  Source: therumpus.net

• I want the flashbacks to feel that once you're there they have their own unity, their own kind of atmospheric sensibility; I want the reader to be transported. The novel is a big, complicated, unknowable thing before it's written.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Unity, Want, Kind

  Source: therumpus.net

• All of my books really do look at that to degrees of difference. Technically, I do enjoy the flashback! But not just for informational material.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Book, Differences, Degrees

  Source: therumpus.net

• The past, as you suggest, is absolutely present at all times and the present is born from the past. I wouldn't want to suggest that the past determines the present.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Past, Want, Born

  Source: therumpus.net

• I wanted to present a sweep and scope of larger events, and a grander backdrop, but most important was to set against that a very singular, real and modest people struggling with every day and human struggles.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Real, Struggle, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• I did a lot of reading of first person accounts from Koreans and combatants and aid workers. And I spoke to relatives. A lot of wonderful photographs were made available to me from that period - 1950-1956 - and those were given to me by a Korean newspaper in Seoul. Ruined villages, refugees streaming through a river valley, GI's and orphans and orphanages, those tiny details that you can only see in a picture.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Reading, Rivers, Village

  Source: therumpus.net

• It's not that I wrote those details, but photos can give you the confidence that you have a real feel for the landscape. Then you can invent with a solid kind of faith, and recreate a feel and flavor of the time, and, one hopes, a tonality, a sense of that time having been lived by those characters.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Real, Character, Giving

  Source: therumpus.net

• I had a visceral connection to the period [of Korean War]. By visceral I suppose I mean emotional. But every fiction requires so much that is not that so I did a lot of other research and a lot of thinking, a lot of struggling there.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  War, Struggle, Mean

  Source: therumpus.net

• I'd always wanted to write something about the Korean War because of my heritage. My father lost his brother during the war, and I fictionalized that episode, which was told to me very briefly without much detail.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Brother, Father, War

  Source: therumpus.net

• I try to be aware of what I'm concerned about, aware of how I feel about myself in the world, aware of how I feel about the issues of the day, but I guess I don't want to write essays in my head about my craft and maybe it's because I teach and talk about craft of other writers as a reader. I feel the moment I start doing that is when it's going to kill me.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Writing, Issues, Trying

  Source: therumpus.net

• So my first book I had no experience having written a book, but each book is a little snapshot of who you are at that moment, accrued all through time, so I accept that.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Book, Firsts, Snapshots

  Source: therumpus.net

• I don't think that stuff is gone - I just don't want to dwell on it. There's a difference. As I said, I think we all have tendencies as writers, and I think we all have experience that we bring as readers to each project.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Thinking, Differences, Gone

  Source: therumpus.net

• Some writers are writing one great, big book and just taking all these different avenues towards it. They might seem on the outside to be different, but they're really not. And that's a different kind of mindset. I don't know why it is, but I just feel like I really want to escape myself as much as I can - myself as the artist, or as the writer, or as the thinker - with each new project, because one, it's just boredom, but also, I guess I just feel most comfortable starting a new book if I just feel a little in the dark about it.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Book, Writing, Dark

  Source: therumpus.net

• I did feel a little afraid, as you say, the complete liberty and "elasticity" of it. But I found that I liked some of the things that it availed me of in terms of emotion and tonal stuff. I came to find it appealing.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Liberty, Littles, Stuff

  Source: therumpus.net

• I really try to forget. I only look at my old works if there's an interview and someone asks me about it. Otherwise, it's not even in the rearview mirror.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Mirrors, Trying, Interviews

  Source: therumpus.net

• It's just a weird idea to me because each book is a complete universe unto itself, so why would I want this other universe from this other galaxy that has nothing to do with mine? That's how I really feel about it. Let's be honest - I'm still the writer, so certain things will be common denominators. But that I just want to keep natural and not studied.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Book, Ideas, Want

  Source: therumpus.net

• I think the action is ninety-three percent, and the consideration is peppered throughout but pretty short... Once I start it, I feel as though I don't want to look over my shoulder too much. I want to trust the preparations I've made.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Thinking, Preparation, Want

  Source: therumpus.net

• I think that's great - I just try not to be one of those people. I find the more I think about it, the less free I feel when I write and when I work.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Writing, Thinking, People

  Source: therumpus.net