184 Quotes by Min Jin Lee

I think that the shame of being different is very painful for a lot of people.

I've often felt like an outsider, not necessarily because I'm Korean, an immigrant, or female. I think writers are odd people.

I have romantic ideas about home and what it should mean.

I do have love for Japan. At the same time, I have a complex relationship with Japan because I'm Korean. But I think it shows the strength of a country when you can talk about the past transparently.

I think that what's bizarre to me about life is that sometimes you have to have everything taken away before you experience grace or before you actually recognize that grace can happen to you.

I think that social migration to another economic class requires a kind of negotiating with yourself. And also, there's so much ambivalence in your heart about who you are and who you're really not.

I find being an adult very difficult. Being an adult artist, Asian American, incredibly difficult. Or trying, anyway.

One thing that struck me in my study of history is how people are excluded. I don't mean just racial minorities or women. Pretty much all poor people who don't have documents are excluded from history and its records. People who were illiterate usually didn't leave any primary documents.

We have huge holes in our education in the West. I think that we have little knowledge of Asian history. If you ask a well-educated, modern Western person about World War II, most will think that the theatre of war was only in Europe. But it's known that the Pacific War was going on concurrently, and we don't know anything about it.