Top 44 Celeste Ng Quotes

In the case of ‘Everything I Never Told You,’ my goal was to make the experiences of a family that had always felt marginalised feel accessible and understandable even to people who’d never been in that situation.

Debut novels are difficult because nobody knows you… they just don’t find a huge audience, because that’s how the market works.

My parents did give me a lot of books – biographies of Marie Curie – and I did read them, because I was interested.

I really wanted to be a poet – until I realized that I really didn’t have what it took to be a poet.

The competitions between fiction and nonfiction, short and long, electronic and paper, are not battles in which there can be only one victor. After all, we exist in a world where more kinds of writing than ever are greeted with interest and enthusiasm.

Gore isn’t required for a good story, but adversity is.

For the first three years of his life, my son insisted on hearing ‘Goodnight Moon’ before bedtime. Like most babies, he was not a good sleeper by disposition – but reading seemed to help, and this book specifically became part of his whole wind-down ritual.

The first bookstore I loved wasn’t a little independent gem nestled in a neighborhood: it was a modest Waldenbooks in our local shopping mall.

Reading feeds writing: it presents you with new ideas to engage with.

Taste is idiosyncratic, so I don’t love everything people recommend me, and I don’t love everything my friends love.

It’s easy to feel helpless – like you can’t fight the tide. But remember: small actions can have a huge impact, and one person like you can inspire others to action.

I was fortunate to have many teachers who encouraged me – one of the first was Dianne Derrick, my 5th grade teacher at Woodbury Elementary. She challenged us to write creatively and praised my work, but most importantly, she treated writing like it was important.

In my own work, when I start off writing a scene, I don’t know which physical details are going to turn out to be meaningful. But, inevitably, certain images will stand out – you start to decide which ones are important as you go.

A good poem is an amazing thing: a perfectly distilled, articulate moment. It opens you up – sometimes slowly, like the blooming of a flower, and sometimes with a quick knife-slice.

Books by women, people of color, LGBTQ authors, differently abled people, and non-Americans are a great way of broadening horizons and building empathy.

My parents came to America in the late 1960s because my father studied for a Ph.D. in Indiana. My mother joined him later. We had ancestors who came over at the turn of the century. One worked in a laundry, as is typical of Chinese-American immigrants.

Even if Pearl S. Buck hadn’t spent most of her life in China, she’d have every right to write about it.

Now that I have a child of my own, I’m in awe of – and deeply grateful for – the time my parents spent in taking me to bookstores.

I resisted Twitter for a long time. To me, it was synonymous with networking, which in my mind means unceasing self-promotion and superficial small-talk with strangers. A little like wading into a river with a raging current – and I’m a terrible swimmer.

There’s a great joy in writing about a place you know very well, but there’s also a lot of responsibility in trying to be accurate. It’s a lot like writing about a relative: you can see both their strengths and their shortcomings, and even as you want to be honest, you want people to see the good that’s there as well.

If someone were to call me ‘the next Amy Tan,’ it would not be because – or not primarily because – we have similar themes or subjects or styles. Let’s be honest: it would be because we are both Chinese American.

Local politics is just as important as national – and often easier to influence.

Browse Amazon reviews, and you’ll see a surprising number of readers who believe one novel can summarize a country, its culture, and its people.

Stories work better when not everyone gets what they want.

In 2011, I didn’t read a single book.

Writers, most of them, don’t have a lot of resources.

One of the things I like so much about ‘Goodnight Moon’ is the way it leaves room for ambiguity.

I wrote ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ and sold the book in 2015, still the Obama years. The possibility of a Trump presidency was not on my radar.

I play music on my phone to fall asleep when I’m on the road and as an alarm clock to wake me up, so I need it nearby – but there are never outlets by the bed in hotels!

For me, any story I tackle begins with the human relationships and not the plot.

I loved growing up in Shaker Heights, and I really miss it.

Short of the dishonest, the illegal, and the cruel, there’s only one thing my son could do that would really disappoint me: not liking reading.

My mother ended up getting a Ph.D. of her own, in chemistry, and eventually became a tenured professor.

Comparing Asian writers mainly to other Asian writers implies that we’re all telling the same story – a disappointingly reductive view.

The proliferation of styles, genres, and media need not be the death knell of anything. Instead, it’s a sign that our acceptance for variation and experimentation has become wider, our interests have become more diverse, and our appetites have become more omnivorous.

I’m really interested in how we understand each other – and whether we can understand each other.

You may not be a fan of Twitter-fiction. That’s okay. There are novels out there for you – big ones.

What’s the best way to ensure a supply of good books in the future? Support up-and-coming writers now.

My husband’s parents were both English teachers for decades.

When my father finished his Ph.D., my mother went back for another bachelor’s degree, this time in environmental science.

I think I’m good at metaphors and descriptions. Plot doesn’t come naturally to me, so I work really hard at it.

It’s incredibly rewarding to have people come up to me at readings and say, ‘I’m not Chinese, but this is the relationship I have with my mother.’ Or say, ‘Your book made me think a lot about my parents, and I’ve decided to sign up for counseling.’ That is mind-boggling.

I’m very much a people pleaser, and the first book had such a devoted and loving following.

I think one of the reasons that I like fiction versus nonfiction is that I myself can kind of disappear from the story.