Upamanyu Chatterjee Quotes

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

I'm a comedian who happens to be Latino. What's the difference? The difference is, my special will air on Comedy Central, not Telemundo.

I remember acting in a school play about the melting pot when I was very little. There was a great big pot onstage. On the other side of the pot was a little girl who had dark hair, and she and I were representing the Italians. And I thought: Is that what an Italian looked like?

I feel like a lot of the portrayals of, in particular, younger minority ethnic characters on television, a lot of their dialogue, a lot of their characteristics, a lot of their personality in a writer's eyes, is kind of propelled through their ethnicity.

I have played Polynesian. I have played an Arabian girl. I played an East Indian girl. And what was so confusing about that, which I mention in my book, is that I assumed I had to have an accent. Nobody said anything, so I made up what I call the universal ethnic accent, and they all sounded alike. It didn't matter who I was playing.

I try to represent specific experiences of specific characters, and that's all I want to try to do. I don't ever try to think about representing a culture, because its impossible, and someone will fault you. And it just doesn't interest me.

When we started on 'Power,' I was committed to respecting the differences among Spanish dialects: Dominican, Nuyorican, Mexican, etc. I wanted the language our characters spoke to be as specific as possible, to reflect New York as it is.

I seem to have to make my characters family before I can access their hearts in any way that matters.

I'm not becoming western; I am still following my Pashtun culture, and I'm wearing a shalvar kamiz, a dupatta on my head.

Real people are never central characters in my works.

I'm so sick of people treating Latinos like some homogenous group that all feel the same way about everything.

There really aren't any completely Asian people singing right now.

I feel like elements of race and identity and ethnicity are sort of missing in all of literature, not just in women's literature.

I am not a Hollywood Jew and I won't ever be one.

Playing a positive role on a network television show, it was great. I took it as a responsibility. Poncherello was supposed to be Poncherelli, and then when I got this part I said, 'You know what, this guy isn't going to be Italian-American, he's gonna be Hispanic American.' And they went with it.

I like to consider myself an actor who just happens to be Hispanic.

Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, I've never had the sense I was 'making up' a character. It feels more like watching people reveal themselves, ever more deeply, more intimately.

Somebody told me once I wasn't Latin enough, and that made me laugh.

In some cases, the casting directors have casted blindly and have not looked into my ethnic background.

I'd like to think I'm not quite so pretentious as to think my characters go off and live their lives once I've written the final page and switched the computer off.

I often think of the novel as a form that celebrates social groups, and the short story being a form that is capable of celebrating an individual or a sort of insular little pair of people.

I want to look at this character from all points of view. I know I don't want to make them all good or all bad or all anything... the story itself often helps create the character.

I played a Spaniard. I looked about as Spanish as any other fair-skinned German.

The question of likability is a bit of a puzzler for me. You know, I don't write people with likability in mind. It's more whether or not I find them compelling.

I've been lucky that even when I was younger, just because of my look or whatever, I was afforded the opportunity or called on to try. 'Can you do this Hispanic character?' 'Can you do this Italian character?' 'Can you do this Jewish-American character?' I just had to develop a facility for their accents.