Min Jin Lee

“...a God that did everything we thought was right and good wouldn't be the creator of the universe. He would be our puppet.”

“But a God that did everything we thought was right and good wouldn't be the creator of the universe. He would be our puppet. He wouldn't be God. There's more to everything than we can know.”

“You want to see a very bad man? Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination. Let's see how good he is when he can do whatever he wants.”

“It was not Hansu that she missed, or even Isak. What she was seeing again in her dreams was her youth, her beginning, and her wishes--so this is how she became a woman.”

“Learn everything. Fill your mind with knowledge—it’s the only kind of power no one can take away from you.”

“He never told him to study, but rather to learn, and it occurred to him that there was a marked difference. Learning was like playing, not labor.”

“We all want to be affiliated with success. It's the impulse of people who have been excluded, and Koreans have been excluded from lots of parties.”

“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 rea...”

“I think it's not an accident that you don't have that many Asian American women writers who are breaking out. I don't think it's an accident that you don't have that many Asian American writ...”

“I had thought that Tokyo would be like New York City, but it wasn't. I'd imagined that they'd be similar in their bustle and noise level, but, in fact, Tokyo is a very calm metropolis. The b...”

“My father was born on Christmas Day in 1934. He grew up in what is now part of North Korea. When the Korean War began, my father was 16, and he found passage on an American refugee ship,thin...”

“We're so willing to dehumanize entire populations in order for us to conveniently go along with our lives. We know exactly one North Korean, for example. The rest of them, we don't know - bu...”

“I moved to Queens, New York, when I was seven and a half. I went to middle school in a foreign country, but I had so many different kinds of Americans push me along and encourage me. I was v...”

“I like making things. I enjoy putting words and images on a blank space. There should be joy in the writing itself because parts of it are so challenging and lonesome. I take great pleasure...”

“Twenty-five million people who live in North Korea are denied freedom in every respect of their lives. In short, they are hostages. Imagine 25 million hostages.”

“People often think of America as a classless society, but, of course, that isn't true. Within immigrant communities, there's an enormous distinction of class, depending on who your parents a...”

“Koreans are worried about the Japanese right-wing people, who tend to be against foreigners. But the Koreans in Japan aren't even foreigners. They are essentially culturally Japanese. If a f...”

“Koreans love to dance; they love to sing. If you actually know Koreans, you see how absurd the stereotype of the 'Asian robot' is. They love to laugh - they're very affectionate. Maybe becau...”

“I was very interested in history, but I also thought, you know, history is not that interesting sometimes, and it can feel a bit medicinal.”

“As an artist, my wheelhouse is 19th-century literature. I want to write realist novels in a Victorian sense, and the writers I admire in that style tend to do omniscient narration.”