Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm naturally a shy, quiet person.
I love romantic comedies more than anything.
My father grew up in a life of extreme privilege.
No matter our background, we all have crazy families.
I come from an old establishment family from Singapore.
The idea of Asian ascendancy has entered public culture.
Canada has become such a staging area for Chinese money.
My father went to boarding school in Sydney when he was 14.
When cultural movements happen, it's so beyond your control.
At least when it comes to food, there's no snobbery in Singapore.
One of the dreams on my wish list is to spend more time in Thailand.
I wanted to introduce a contemporary Asia to a North American audience.
Warner Bros. is just this amazing historic studio that does great movies.
I really don't keep an outline; I don't organize in any way. I just write.
There's always been this tradition of satirizing these rich groups of people.
People have always been fascinated by the foibles of the wealthy and privileged.
I'm not revealing any deep, hidden secret that there are wealthy people in Asia.
If you're the water boiler king of China, you're selling a billion water boilers.
I was born in Singapore, and I lived there until I was 12. I had a very fortunate upbringing.
In Singapore, there may be 50 old-money families, but you wouldn't know them to look at them.
My father came from old money. There was less of an expectation for the children to earn a living.
To me, families are fascinating. I choose to explore it through comedy and through comic situations.
I would not call my family 'traditional Chinese.' We were more what I would term the Colonial Chinese.
I'm a writer. I'm naturally introverted, so being the public face of something, I don't think I do it well.
I grew up with a posh English accent, and all my aunts sounded as if they came out of a Merchant Ivory movie.
My grandmother used to get her shoes made in Paris in the '30s, and they would be shipped to her in Singapore.
My golden dream was to move to New York and live in the Village and become that cool rebel beatnik Jack Kerouac.
Asian literature is evolving with the people. It's always a reflection on what's happening to the culture at large.
It's human nature when you first make your big fortune to want to show off a bit. I don't begrudge that whatsoever.
They say truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, but there's such a thing as believability when you're writing a novel.
I came from a family of extremely old money, and so by the time I was born, there was really just a trickle of money left.
There are old-money Asians that would never be caught dead with a Chanel handbag or sporting anything that has a label it.
I moved to New York and went to art school at Parsons School of Design. Became a photographer. Became a creative consultant.
In Asia, it's customary to get together with your entire extended family on a regular basis, and it's all rife with politics.
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.
I live in New York, but I still get the village gossip. My apartment is a crash pad for so many Singaporean cousins and friends.
People are often disappointed when they meet me because I'm not this giant, flamboyant - you know, I don't wear sequined jackets.
Hollywood is a whole other level of crazy. I've never met so many assistants who have assistants. It's a stratified society on its own.
Writers often say that characters begin to write themselves, and I never used to believe that. I always thought that was complete hogwash.
I do believe that peoples' natures can be changed, and they have to be changed if we want to live in this modern world and be a part of it.
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.
'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.
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.
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.
Even if they're not Asian or super rich... everyone has a nagging mother. Everyone has that obnoxious uncle, or that cousin who's a bit too snobby.
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 think snobbery is one of the oldest customs in the world, and the rich will always find ways to rank each other and make themselves feel more special than others.
Such huge money has been made in China - it can be hundreds of millions in a year - and there's a need to validate it by showing what they can buy and how much of it.
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.
It's not normal to go into a house and see a pond in the middle of the living room full of baby sharks. It's not normal to go to someone's garage and see a private plane.