Hanya Yanagihara
Hanya Yanagihara
Hanya Yanagihara is an American novelist and travel writer of Hawaiian ancestry...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
CountryUnited States of America
affair asia fall love lucky
Those of us lucky enough to fall in love with Asia know that it's an affair that's as long as it is resonant.
found fulfilling life relationship simply
What makes a fulfilling relationship or fulfilling life is not simply found in another. It's found in a group of others.
cool country dry heat hot sink south
Where most of the country is, well, hot - from the bone-baking dry heat of the desert to the flesh-melting humidity of Kerala in the south - Kashmir is cool: so cool, in fact, that in the winter, the temperatures can sink to sub-zero.
consider devalued friendship gets move partner people relationship
I think for a lot of people, friendship is a relationship that gets devalued once they move on to what people consider to be more important relationships: once you find a partner or when you have kids.
In Mumbai, the air is saltier. The sea is roilier. The traffic is snarlier. The pinks are pinker. The ostentation is crazier.
forced gift great hope interior nature people work worry
Writing is, by its nature, interior work. So being forced to be around people is a great gift for a novelist. You get to be reminded, daily, of how people think, how they speak, how they live; the things they worry about, the things they hope for, the things they fear.
science writer
The process of being a writer is much more interior than being a scientist, because science is so reactionary.
complicit viewer
Photography is always a kind of stealing. A theft from the subject. Artists are assaulters in a lot of ways, and the viewer is complicit in that assault.
beginning belonging building grand science scientists since sure themselves whereas work worked writers
I think that all research scientists think of themselves as belonging to a grand tradition, building on work that has been worked on since the very beginning of science itself. Whereas I'm not sure writers think of themselves in the same way.
people searching
Part of adulthood is searching for the people who understand you.
advances job work writers
I think fiction writers should work. If you have a job and are not living off advances or grants, you never have to make concessions in your writing, ever.
born moved
I was born in L.A., then we moved to Hawaii, then we moved to New York, then we moved to Baltimore, then we moved to California, then we moved to Hawaii, then we moved to Texas, then we moved to Hawaii, then we moved to California. This was before I was 17.
writers written
I think that fiction writers can write about anyone. If you are writing a character, and the only thing they are to you is their otherness, then you haven't written a character.
created logical
When you write a novel, you never have to be in the service of the reader. My only concern with my books is that the world that's created be as logical and whole as possible.