146 Quotes by Alexander Chee

When I am gripped with despair, when I think I might stop, I speak to my dead. Tell them a story. What am I doing with this life? They hold me accountable. I let them make me bolder or more modest or louder or more moving, but I ask them to listen, and then write.

I resented the idea of being talented. I couldn’t respect it — in my experience, no one else did. Being called talented at school had only made me a target for resentment. I wanted to work. Work, I could honor.

And I would tell him, as we rise into the air, The curse is not that we cannot choose our Fates. The curse, the curse we all live under, is that we can.

I think you can never know what you can live without. I think you can never know what you will live through. Only when the disaster arrives and you are there does the depth of your real inner resources reveal itself, and not a moment before

There's a reason that whenever fascists come to power, the writers are among the first to go to jail.

And I would tell him, as we rise into the air, The curse is not that we cannot choose our Fates.The curse, the curse we all live under, is that we can.

After his sisters were taken away, the Japanese occupying force sent my grandfather to Imperial Schools. My first language is Japanese, he tells me. English far away. Sometimes, right after he told me, I would look at him and wonder what it felt like, to have the print of your enemy all the way inside you, right into the way you shaped your thoughts.

Love is never governed by Reason.

...the only things you must have to become a writer are the stamina to continue and a wily, cagey heart in the face of extremity, failure and success.