Asian Quotes

“[novan]: bassists are very good with their fingers
[novan]: and some of us sing backup vocals, so that means we're good with our mouths too...

(~ IM chat with Novan Chang, 18, bassist)”
― Jess C Scott, EyeLeash: A Blog Novel

“The attendant pointed out that the bones were in very good shape and so many of them had survived cremation because the deceased was relatively young and healthy. Torn almost rolled his eyes. We could do without the biology lesson.”
― L. M. Weeks, Bottled Lightning

“It was muddy from all the rain. A few gray wooden houses on both sides and one old, tired store lined the road. Two dark mangy stray dogs, shivering in the damp cold, wandered the street and a few crows sat in the dead trees, waiting for who knew what.”
― L. M. Weeks, Bottled Lightning

“Torn was betwixt and between, but eventually realized the arrangement suited him quite well. He had the security of his long-term relationship with Yukie and the romance with Mayumi. Unfortunately, it took two women for him to get what he wanted from one.”
― L. M. Weeks, Bottled Lightning

“He was genuinely concerned. He wanted her happy and healthy. The idea of divorcing her when she was ill made him feel even more guilty and she knew it. And he knew she knew.”
― L. M. Weeks

“He felt a little lost, after that experience. Lost as the girls on their knees. It was a never-ending story of young girls losing themselves, such that they were no longer humans with any souls or characters, but pretty girls with fat asses and nice tits.”
― Jess C Scott, Take-Out, Part 1

“Asian men could be socially inept and incompetent and ridiculous, like a Long Duk Dong, or at best unthreatening and slightly buffoonish, like a Jackie Chan. They were not allowed to be angry and articulate and powerful. And possibly right, Mr. Richardson thought uneasily.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“What does it mean when I say that 'I don't see race?' It means that because I learned to see no difference between 'white' and 'color,' I have white-washed my own sense of self. It means that I know more about what it is to be a white person than what it is to be Asian, and I am a stranger among both.”
― Michi Trota

“Silence descended on the house. [....] Amma must have sensed that this was the sort of silence that, left unchallenged, could consume the family from within.”
― Vivek Shanbhag, Ghachar Ghochar

“When we say ‘Asian American’ we are talking about so much more than can be fit in a single stereotype.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“Jiang whistled. 'Well, that's not a prison.'
'It's worse,' Rin said. 'That's a church.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“There are thousands of other women to choose from. You understand me? And this court runs on ambition alone.”
― Cindy Pon, Fury of the Phoenix

“Maria Clara did not faint, simply because the Filipinos do not know how to faint.”
― José Rizal, Noli Me Tángere (Touch Me Not)

“My interest has always been in the place where sex and race are both obscenely conspicuous and yet consciously suppressed, largely because of the liminal place that the Asian man occupies in the midst of it: an “honorary white” person who will always be denied the full perquisites of whiteness; an entitled man who will never quite be regarded or treated as a man; a nominal minority whose claim to be a “person of color” deserving of the special regard reserved for victims is taken seriously by no one. In an age characterised by the politics of resentment, the Asian man knows something of the resentment of the embattled white man besieged on all sides by grievances and demands for reparation, and something of the resentments of the rising social justice warrior, who feels with every fibre of their being that all that stands in the way of the attainment of their thwarted ambitions is nothing so much as a white man. Tasting of the frustrations of both, he is denied the entitlements of either.”
― Wesley Yang, The Souls of Yellow Folk: Essays

“[…] as the bearer of an Asian face in America, you paid some incremental penalty, never absolute, but always omnipresent, that meant that you were by default unlovable and unloved; that you were presumptively a nobody, a mute and servile figure, distinguishable above all by your total incapacity to threaten anyone; that you were many laudable things that the world might respect and reward, but that you were fundamentally powerless to affect anyone in a way that would make you either loved or feared.

What was the epistemological status of such an extravagant assertion? Could it possibly be true? Could it survive empirical scrutiny? It was a dogmatic statement at once unprovable and unfalsifiable. It was a paranoid statement about the way others regarded you that couldn’t possibly be true in any literal sense. It had no real truth value, except that under certain conditions, one felt it with every fibre of one’s being to be true.”
― Wesley Yang, The Souls of Yellow Folk: Essays

“I do not fear the sun darkening my skin. I fear colonialism damaging my self-worth with bleach.”
― The Thoughtful Beast

“I am an Asian goddess! I love myself and show others they can love themselves as well.”
― The Thoughtful Beast

“It's the 21st century. I am not submissive. I can own property. You cannot call me exotic.”
― The Thoughtful Beast

“If a guy has a thing for black women - jungle fever.

If a guy has a thing for asian women - yellow fever.

If a guy has a thing for indian women - curry craving.

Is there a term for having a thing for white women? What about latina woman?

For white women: Calcium deficiency? White delight? Snowburn? Mayo madness? Reverse-colonialism? Racism? The other white meat?

Empanada ecstacy? Guacamole grip? Tostones temptation? Arepa amor? Cafe con leche? A taste for churros? Sofrito satisfaction? Cortez' revenge? Catholocism? Arroz con pussy? Chile con culo?”
― stained hanes, 94,000 Wasps in a Trench Coat

“I refused to be stuck. In Pasaje, California. In the smallness of my mother's life. In a fixed notion of my cooking, my abilities, my worth as ascribed to my Chineseness my Asianness my smallness my womanness my perpetual foreignness--myself.”
― C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

“I embrace and celebrate the color of my skin. Why should I reject the skin color that reflects the work my ancestors did tending to their harvests, creating homes for their families and protecting their lands?”
― The Thoughtful Beast

“All Mixed Up is very much about Australia right now. Being mixed-up is what it means to be Australian. We're a great mixed-up country.”
― Jason Om, All Mixed Up

“All Mixed Up is very much about Australia right now. Being mixed up is what it means to be Australian. We're a great mixed up country.”
― Jason Om, All Mixed Up

“The invasion of Taiwan will be a navy war.”
― Steven Magee

“In Pryor, I saw someone channel what I call minor feeling: the racialized range of emotions that are negative, dysphoric, and therefore untelegenic, built from the sediments of everyday racial experience and the irritant of having one's perception of reality constantly questioned or dismissed.”
― Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

“The indignity of being Asian in this country has been underreported. We have been cowed by the lie that we have it good. We keep our heads down and work hard, believing that our diligence will reward us with our dignity, but our diligence will only make us disappear. By not speaking up, we perpetuate the myth that our shame is caused by our repressive culture and the country we fled, whereas America has given us nothing but opportunity.”
― Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

“Asians are always mistaken for other Asians, but the least we can do to honor the dead is to ensure they're never mistaken for anyone else again.”
― Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

“Alexander may or may not have peeked out of the kitchen office to make sure Eden actually ate the rest of her Asian fusion abomination. Her delicious Asian fusion abomination.
As much as it bothers him to admit, Alexander has never tasted anything so amazing before. The sauce was tangy, notes of lime coming to the forefront without being overpowering.
The mini pita shells she'd used had been warmed on the skillet, offering a lovely crunchy texture to offset the softness of the Pad Thai.”
― Katrina Kwan, Knives, Seasoning, & A Dash of Love

“What looks to Westerners like Asian deference, in other words, is actually a deeply felt concern for the sensibilities of others. As the psychologist Harris Bond observes, “It is only those from an explicit tradition who would label [the Asian] mode of discourse ‘selfeffacement.’ Within this indirect tradition it might be labeled ‘relationship honouring.’ ” And relationship honoring leads to social dynamics that can seem remarkable from a Western perspective. It’s because of relationship honoring, for example, that social anxiety disorder in Japan, known as taijin kyofusho, takes the form not of excessive worry about embarrassing oneself, as it does in the United States, but of embarrassing others.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“They have flavors like Hong Kong milk tea and ube and Vietnamese coffee. Spiced persimmon. Mango lassi. Jasmine tea."
There's something sexy about Mark listing off gelato flavors for me.”
― Jackie Lau, Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie