Hanya Yanagihara Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• Now, almost twenty years since my last job in book publishing, I know that there are far more socially inept people in book than in magazine publishing. At the time, however, I just didn't feel I was enough: smart enough, savvy enough, well read enough, educated enough, charming enough. Much of this was probably because I was very naive, and didn't really know how to behave in an office. This made me a terrible assistant, which in turn made me a terrible junior book editor.

  Hanya Yanagihara

  Smart, Book, People

  Interview with Alexis Cheung, believermag.com. November 20, 2017.

• As with editing, I think my strength as a writer is structure. It's not a skill that's much discussed when we discuss fiction, or not as much as language or character development anyway, but it's the first thing I determine before I begin writing - not just books, but anything. I think I know how to pace a narrative well. I think I'm aware of repetition, that I try to create different kinds of sentences as often as I can. Those are all things I learned from magazine editing.

  Hanya Yanagihara

  Book, Writing, Character

  Interview with Alexis Cheung, believermag.com. November 20, 2017.

• Many writers hate the shilling process, and I understand that. However, it's really the only thing about the publication process you can somewhat control. You can't affect reviews. But you can try to find your book an audience. One of the problems with the book publishing industry is that their publicity efforts tend to be spent on people who already read, and know how to discover, literary fiction.

  Hanya Yanagihara

  Hate, Book, People

  Interview with Alexis Cheung, believermag.com. November 20, 2017.

• Does people not asking me about Asian American literature mean they don't see it as its own literary tradition? I certainly believe in it as its own literary tradition, because your race plays a great factor in how you are seen by the world, and how you see the world; the fact that I'm an Asian American isn't incidental to who I am as a writer. Where it becomes difficult is defining what, if anything identifiable at all, makes an Asian American book an Asian American book, other than the fact of its creator being Asian. And I'd argue that there is nothing identifiable beyond that.

  Hanya Yanagihara

  Believe, Book, Mean

  Interview with Alexis Cheung, believermag.com. November 20, 2017.

• When you want to be a writer, you think that actually getting published will make you feel somehow more real to yourself. But it doesn't. And nor should it. If publication is the pole around which your entire identity pivots, you're in big trouble. I'd also add that many wonderful books by brilliant authors get ignored or overlooked, and that poor sales aren't (necessarily) a measure of your abilities.

  Hanya Yanagihara

  Real, Book, Thinking

  Interview with Alexis Cheung, believermag.com. November 20, 2017.

• When you never leave the literary biosphere, you forget how few people actually read books, and that in turn makes you start overestimating both your ability to make money and your relative renown, which has dangerous consequences: the first means you may end up in debt; the second means you may end up a horrid bore.

  Hanya Yanagihara

  Book, Mean, People

  Interview with Alexis Cheung, believermag.com. November 20, 2017.

• It is always sort of unnerving to hear from people who've read my books. I'm not reading any of the reviews and most of my friends haven't read it - they bought it, which is all I frankly care about, but they haven't read it.

  Hanya Yanagihara

  Book, Reading, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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