Kevin Kwan Quotes

My mother endlessly told me I was too fat, that I wasn't a patch on my sister. It wasn't much fun growing up with her and her almost irrational social climbing in that huge house of my dull stepfather Hughdie Auchincloss in Washington.

My mum thought my TV and film addiction was laziness. If you're an immigrant, you know you'll never be an accepted part of society, but you hope your children will be, and you try to make them essential to the community in a practical way - being a doctor or a lawyer. Acting was beyond their comprehension.

Good supporters who have single daughters say, 'Hey, you need to take my daughter out.' And it's awkward.

Therefore reinforcing a stereotype, therefore thinking that the entire Indian culture is just made of people that are against their children's decisions.

In many Asian households, to not go on to higher education, that's like a big no-no. I know my parents' discouragement was for my own protection, and I'm really close to them now, but they didn't understand that there is value in this. That's because they didn't know.

Parents always stay older than you, but sibling sort of become adults together, and that complicates that relationship, I think.

My parents came from different backgrounds. My father's was grander than my mother's, so my mother had... to put up with the disapproval of my father's relations.

You have to let individuals make their own choices and respect that, even if it's your own child. And that's what was taken away from me. My father passed away thinking I still had to go back to his way of believing.

In certain environments young adults can't choose their lives because of family pressure. In the bourgeoisie there is still a sense you will marry within that milieu.

My parents never understood why I didn't want to be a doctor or lawyer. They're Cuban immigrants who wanted to give their children the American dream, and, to them, that was more of what 'the dream' entailed.

Nobody just leaves medical school, especially given it's fiercely competitive to get in. But I had a sister who was a doctor, another who was a pharmacist, a brother who was an engineer. So my parents already had sensible children who would be able to make an actual living, and I think they felt comfortable sacrificing their one strange child.

I come from a large family, with 16 cousins. My cousins studied well and moved to the U.S. When we all gathered together for special occasions, they would be well groomed and confident. I was the odd, useless one out. All I wanted was to be able to earn without my dad's help and be self-sufficient enough to own a house and a vehicle.

One of the hard things coming from an immigrant family - or any family that doesn't believe in the arts - is that you have to disappoint your parents. That's hard for people to do if you're a good kid.

My parents are really open-minded, but with their own daughter, it's not the same thing.

I have a son, but I've never had a daughter. I have a sister, and my sister had a fairly tempestuous relationship with my dad when she was young, and that was gripping and sometimes upsetting.

I'm Greek-American, and I come from an immigrant-type background, and Greek-American parents want you to be a doctor or a lawyer. Because that's how you make money, and it's very respectable.

My parents really wanted me to have an arranged marriage when I was younger, but I think they have updated a bit with the times.

I was brought up to respect my father and not to love him.

As you get older, I have seen it a lot... fighting among siblings. The reason is usually money or spouses. But my kids don't fall into that trap.

Your fear that your parents will actually kill you for dropping out of college is something that I think a lot of children of immigrants would maybe relate to.

Aristocrats have heirs; the poor have children; the rest keep dogs.

There isn't much I find interesting to write about in middle-class life.

Money is a great dignifier.

...there must be something she wanted; and that therefore she was no lady.