Top 55 Kevin Kwan Quotes

As a child, I didn’t even realize I was Chinese. I was Singaporean, but my identity was wrapped up in the culture I was experiencing every day.

I love Netflix and Amazon and watching movies on streamers as much as the next person.

One of the dreams on my wish list is to spend more time in Thailand.

I grew up with a posh English accent, and all my aunts sounded as if they came out of a Merchant Ivory movie.

I think, at least for me, I’m so impressed by Shanghai and how all of China continues to evolve. On a style level, you’re seeing this increased sophistication and brand awareness.

In order for me to write a scene, it’s very important for me to see and experience everything with my own eyes, so yes, I was able to visit some remarkable houses and destinations while I was in China.

I come from an old establishment family from Singapore.

My grandmother used to get her shoes made in Paris in the ’30s, and they would be shipped to her in Singapore.

They say truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, but there’s such a thing as believability when you’re writing a novel.

The characters that populate my books are global nomads in their own right, keeping multiple homes around the world and constantly jet-setting to new places.

I was born on the island of Singapore, and I grew up there until I was 11 years old, when I was forcibly removed by my dad and planted into suburban Houston. I was in shock for the first year and then began to really love it – but didn’t love it quite enough to stay.

If you’re the water boiler king of China, you’re selling a billion water boilers.

My books are comedies; I want to take my readers on a jet-setting romp, make them laugh, make them swoon at the beautiful settings, and maybe even make their mouths water at all the food.

Certainly, living in the U.S., as I have for over two decades, you see how Asians are portrayed in the media… I didn’t see myself represented, you know, when I used to look at ads on TV.

Warner Bros. is just this amazing historic studio that does great movies.

My golden dream was to move to New York and live in the Village and become that cool rebel beatnik Jack Kerouac.

The most important thing to keep in mind is the incredible diversity of talent that’s out there – there are so many great actors from all over Asia, from Singapore and Hong Kong to the Philippines and Mainland China, not to mention many great Asian-American actors who are eager for fun and challenging roles.

No matter our background, we all have crazy families.

There’s always been this tradition of satirizing these rich groups of people.

I’m a writer. I’m naturally introverted, so being the public face of something, I don’t think I do it well.

I remember I had an aunt that lived in a house that had this beautiful ceramic wall that was entirely a painting of a peacock.

Canada has become such a staging area for Chinese money.

At least when it comes to food, there’s no snobbery in Singapore.

I moved to New York and went to art school at Parsons School of Design. Became a photographer. Became a creative consultant.

Old money in Southeast Asia is much more discrete and low key. It’s about not wearing brand names. It’s about being invisible, almost. The billionaire can be taking the bus with you.

When my first novel, ‘Crazy Rich Asians,’ was published in 2013, many readers were astonished to learn that in Asia, there were women who dressed in couture from morning till night.

Especially in the West, people want to understand Asia on a deeper level because it’s become the engine of the world economy, like it or not.

‘Crazy Rich Asians’ may be fiction, but given the situation I grew up in, I’ve had an unparalleled view into the very real world it depicts.

It would have been amazing to have been a student at Oxford during that golden moment in the 1910s, rubbing elbows with the likes of Aldous Huxley and T.E. Lawrence, before World War I shattered everything forever.

Couture occupies the uppermost stratosphere of fashion. It is the holy of holies, as only about 2,000 women globally are fortunate enough to wear these precious garments tailored to their exact measurements, making it perhaps the most exclusive club in the world.

I was born in Singapore, and I lived there until I was 12. I had a very fortunate upbringing.

To me, families are fascinating. I choose to explore it through comedy and through comic situations.

There’s so much emphasis on the economic might of China, of Southeast Asia, Asian ‘Super Tigers’ and things like that. But nobody was really looking from the perspective of a family story, of these individuals.

It used to be, on TV, you’d see only two types of Asians. You’d see the science geek who’s using his mobile phone or something like that, or you’d see a very token Asian family – yuppie mother and father and two little Asian kids. It’s the last barrier for Hollywood.

I love romantic comedies more than anything.

Living in the West, you see how there’s only two versions of how Asian men are supposed to be. Either they’re very nice, yuppie husbands with children in ads, or they’re IT geeks.

Every family is a crazy family.

I grew up at a time in Singapore – the ’70s and ’80s – where it was still possible to go riding around the island barefoot. And I was one of these kids that was just climbing trees and running around the neighbourhood.

I go to Shenzhen, China, and am taken to a vast luxury spa with a hundred leather recliners and a hundred accompanying plasma screen televisions bolted to the ceiling.

Asian literature is evolving with the people. It’s always a reflection on what’s happening to the culture at large.

If I were to generalize a bit, I would say that the ultra rich in Asia live on a scale that far surpasses the wealthy in the U.S. or Europe.

People have always been fascinated by the foibles of the wealthy and privileged.

I’ve always been drawn to the Edwardian period in England. To me, it seems like such a fascinating time, when the British Empire was at the height of its powers and the strict mores of the Victorian age were dissipating into the decadence of King Edward’s reign.

The China Rich seem to be spending on a scale that’s just beyond anything we’ve ever seen before. They are building and buying an insane amount of luxury residences around the world, commissioning huge flying palaces from Boeing, and paying ridiculous amounts for art.

I remembered that my grandfather had spent his teenage years in Shanghai and that he went back after he finished medical school to work there in a hospital. So I went back into my family archives and was able to find out his exact address; it was a street that was in the French Concession.

I met a Shanghai photographer who finds these old streets and matches the French names to what they are today. I was able to find my grandfather’s block, and just walking the same streets and finding his house was deeply moving. I finally felt connected to China.

Writers often say that characters begin to write themselves, and I never used to believe that. I always thought that was complete hogwash.

A lot of the people who live the lives of ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ don’t see the humour of their lives simply because this is just who they are. Even though I’m from that part of the world, I’m no longer part of that world.

My mother likes to say that I was conceived to shop – not just born to shop. My whole life as a child was following her and her sister and friends around on her shopping trips.

I would not call my family ‘traditional Chinese.’ We were more what I would term the Colonial Chinese.

My grandparents were far more English in their manners than they were Chinese. For example, we spoke English at home, had afternoon tea every day, and my grandfather, who attended university in Scotland, would smoke his pipe after dinner.

Growing up in Singapore, I wasn’t allowed to visit China. So when I was finally able to go there after the country began opening up to tourism in the 1990s, I found it to be utterly astounding.

‘China rich’ is the new ‘crazy rich.’ It’s a new level of outrageousness. It comes from this world where overnight fortunes have been made, but the fortunes are so ginormous compared to anything we’ve ever seen in the history of the world.

I have pictures of my grandmother from the 1920s and ’30s in avant-garde dresses that looked like they could have come from the House of Worth or Lucien Lelong. She would never say if they were couture, but I do recall her telling me, ‘All my clothes and shoes came from Paris.’

It’s human nature when you first make your big fortune to want to show off a bit. I don’t begrudge that whatsoever.