Quotes by Chang-Rae Lee

“But maybe its the laboring that gives you shape. Might the most fulfilling times be those spent solo at your tasks, literally immersed or not, when you are able to uncover the smallest surprises an...”

“The truth, finally, is who can tell it. ”

“Dont sanctuaries become prisons, and vice versa, foremost in the mind?”

“Suffering is the noblest art, the quieter the better.”

“What hasty preperations we make for our future. Think of it: it seems almost tragic, the things were sure we ought to bring along. We pack too heavy with what we hope well use, and too light of wha...”

“For no matter the shadows of an age, the picture of a young couple in love, we are told, speaks most luminously of the future, as the span of that passion makes us believe we can overleap any walls...”

“Her endeavor was misguided and wrong and maybe plain crazy, akin to someone waking up one day and deciding hes going to scale Kilimanjaro because he cant stop imagining the view from the top, the p...”

“It was in the work that she came closest to finding herself, by which we dont mean gaining self-knowledge or understanding ones true nature but rather how at some point you can see most plainly tha...”

“He should have had more faith in himself rather than give in to his weaker qualities, in particular his overeagerness to please and aversion to conflict and a lifelong infatuation with hope, which ...”

“It was in the work that she came closest to finding herself, by which we dont mean gaining self-knowledge or understanding ones true nature but rather how at some point you can see most plainly tha...”

“Imagination might not be limitless. It's still tethered to the universe of what we know.”

“For at some point, each of us will be asked to embody what we feel and know.”

“In this difficult era the most valuable commodity is the unfailing turn of the hours and how they retrieve for us the known harbor of yesterday.”

“Does any program really improve anybody, as much as simply identifying them? And, after identifying them, not ruining them?”

“Does any (MFA) program really improve anybody, as much as simply identifying them? And, after identifying them, not ruining them?”

“Its perhaps more laudable to simply keep heading out into the world, than always tilting to leave ones mark on it.”

“Our tainted world looms within us, every one.”

“I often think that the prime directive for me as a teacher of writing is akin to that for a physician, which is this: do no harm.”

“The truth, finally, is who can tell it.”

“But maybe it’s the laboring that gives you shape. Might the most fulfilling times be those spent solo at your tasks, literally immersed or not, when you are able to uncover the smallest surprises a...”