Yellowface Quotes

“Reading lets us live in someone else’s shoes. Literature builds bridges; it makes our world larger, not smaller.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Reading should be an enjoyable experience, not a chore.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Not every girl has a rape story. But almost every girl has an “I’m not sure, I didn’t like it, but I can’t quite call it rape” story.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“But the best revenge is to thrive.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Social media is such a tiny, insular space. Once you close your screen, no one gives a fuck.”
― Rebecca F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Every writer I know feels this way about someone else. Writing is such a solitary activity. You have no assurance that what you’re creating has any value, and any indication that you’re behind in the rat race sends you spiraling into the pits of despair. Keep your eyes on your own paper, they say. But that’s hard to do when everyone else’s papers are flapping constantly in your face.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“What more can we want as writers than such immortality? Don't ghosts just want to be remembered?”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“It's like pressing a bleeding sore repeatedly, trying to see how far you can go with your tolerance for pain, because if you know the limits of it, you gain some sense of control over it.”
― R.F. Kuang , Yellowface

“Awards don’t matter—at least, I am told this constantly by the people who regularly win them.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“This industry is built on silencing us, stomping us into the ground, and hurling money at white people to produce racist stereotypes of us.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands.
Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much. To stop writing would kill me. I'd never be able to walk through a bookstore without fingering the spines with longing, wondering at the lengthy editorial process that got these titles on shelves and reminiscing about my own. And I'd spend the rest of life curdling with jealousy every time someone like Emmy Cho gets a book deal, every time I learn that some young up-and-comer is living the life I should be living.

Writing has formed the core of my identity since I was a child. After Dad died, after Mom withdrew into herself, and after Rory decided to forge a life without me, writing gave me a reason to stay alive. And as miserable as it makes me, I'll cling to that magic for as long as I live.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“The truth is fluid, there is always another way to spin the story.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“The cultural constructions are clear: so many Chinese ghosts are hungry, angry, voiceless women. In taking Athena's legacy, I've added one to their ranks.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Every time she tried to branch out to new projects, they kept insisting that Asian was her brand, was what her audience expected. They never let her talk about anything other than being an immigrant, other than the fact that half her family died in Cambodia, that her dad killed himself on the twentieth anniversary of Tiananmen. Racial trauma sells, right? They treated her like a museum”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Life is so short. Why do we build up these walls?”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Who has the right to write about suffering?”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“For the first time since I submitted the manuscript, I feel a deep wash of shame. This isn’t my history, my heritage. This isn’t my community. I am an outsider, basking in their love under false pretenses. It should be Athena sitting here, smiling with these people, signing books and listening to the stories of her elders.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“But Twitter is real life; it's realer than real life, because that is the realm that the social economy of publishing exists on, because the industry has no alternative.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“I need to create. It is a physical urge, a craving, like breathing, like eating; when it’s going well, it’s better than sex, and when it’s not, I can’t take pleasure in anything else.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“It’s hard, after all, to be friends with someone who outshines you at every turn.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“People always describe jealousy as this sharp, green, venomous thing. Unfounded, vinegary, mean-spirited. But I’ve found that jealousy, to writers, feels more like fear. Jealousy is the spike in my heart rate when I glimpse news of Athena’s success on Twitter—another book contract, awards nominations, special editions, foreign rights deals. Jealousy is constantly comparing myself to her and coming up short; is panicking that I’m not writing well enough or fast enough, that I am not, and never will be, enough. Jealousy means that even just learning that Athena’s signing a six- figure option deal with Netflix means that I’ll be derailed for days, unable to focus on my own work, mired by shame and self-disgust every time I see one of her books in a bookstore display.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“which is why revulsion for Rupi Kaur’s poetry has become a millennial personality trait.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Most of the accounts that participate so clearly do not care about the truth. They’re here for the entertainment. These people love to have a target, and they’ll tear apart anything you put in front of them.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“I wonder if that’s the final, obscure part of how publishing works: if the books that become big do so because at some point everyone decided, for no good reason at all, that this would be the title of the moment.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“I've written myself into a corner. The first two-thirds of the book were a breeze to compose, but what do I do with the ending? Where do I leave my protagonist, now that there's a hungry ghost in the mix, and no clear resolution?”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“I would have liked Allie better if she were a shy, bookish type I could have taken on shopping sprees at indie bookstores instead of an iPhone-addicted, TikTok-obsessed basic bitch in training.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Maybe it was Highlander Syndrome—I’ve read about that before, the way members of marginalized groups feel threatened if someone else like them starts finding success.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“(I thought about posting a phone screenshot of my statement drafted in the Notes app, but Notes app apologies have become a genre in and of themselves, and not a very respectable one.)”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface