241 Quotes by Hanya Yanagihara

He knew what the houses meant to Malcolm: they were an assertion of control, a reminder that for all the uncertainties of his life, there was one thing that he could manipulate perfectly, that would always express what he was unable to in words.

He would be a better person, he knows. He would be a more loving person.

He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.

We all say we want our kids to be happy, only happy, and healthy, but we don't want that. We want them to be like we are, or better than we are. We as humans are very unimaginative in that sense. We aren't equipped for the possibility that they might be worse. But I guess that would be asking too much. It must be an evolutionary stopgap - if we were all so specifically, vividly aware of what might go horribly wrong, we would none of us have children at all.

I didn’t intend the book as anything therapeutic and I don't think that’s a novel’s goal or responsibility.

In graduate school, he'd had a teacher who had told him that the best actors are the most boring people. A string sense of self was detrimental, because an actor had to let the self disappear; he had to let himself be subsumed by a character. "If you want to be a personality, be a pop star," his teacher had said.

To no one, he knew, not even to Willem. But he'd had years to learn how to keep his thoughts to himself; unlike his friends, he had learned not to share evidence of his oddities as a way to distinguish himself from others, although he was happy and proud that they shared theirs with him

I know my life's meaningful because" - and here he stopped, and looked shy, and was silent for a moment before he continued - " because I'm a good friend. I love my friends, and I care about them, and I think I make them happy.

But mostly, I missed watching you two together; I missed watching you watch him, and him watch you; I missed how thoughtful you were with each other, missed how thoughtlessly, sincerely affectionate you were with him; missed watching you listen to each other, the way you both did so intently.