Chang-Rae Lee Quotes

I try to write in the mornings, as soon as I'm up and caffeinated, and to stay in the chair as long as I can be productive.

Music has a tremendous effect on me. When it's playing, I can't think or do anything other than listen. But I can write to it.

I don't need music to write, but sometimes I put music on. I don't need special clothes or even my own equipment.

I pecked my stories out two-fingered on the Remington portable typewriter my mother had bought me. I had begged for it when I was ten.

I can't imagine what it would be like to write in a relaxed state. I'm going to be writing some stories for my own interest. I want to experiment with different things and see if I can approach writing with much less control and in a better psychological state. It will be like breaking out of a straitjacket.

I don't have any particular rituals, I sometimes like to write in longhand when I'm searching for ideas but I do the vast majority by typing, I can't always keep up with my thoughts longhand. I'm not a coffee shop writer because I feel obliged to order more coffee and then I end up over-caffeinated.

When I am fishing, I think quite a lot about the fish, but I also think about the book I'm writing.

I wander around the house and write in bed, at the kitchen table, by the window, in the yard.

My aunt got me interested in journalism - she found an old typewriter, had it worked over, put it on the dining room table, gave me a stack of paper and said, 'Play like you're a writer.'

Until now, I've been a kind of binge-writer - I'll carve out five or six hours on a weekend day and make a large container of espresso and just bang out a lot of words.

You have to relax, write what you write. It sounds easy but it's really, really hard. One of the things it took me longest to learn was to trust the writing process.

I like coffee in the morning and decaf green tea throughout the day... When I was younger and modeling, to kick-start a diet I would do a juice cleanse.

I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.

To be a novelist, all I need is a pen and a piece of paper.

When I'm writing a novel, which is what I like to write, I get up early, sit zazen, make a pot of green tea. I wear wrist cuffs to keep my wrists warm and minimize irritation from extended contact with the surface of my desk. I sit down and write.

I have two hammocks, one Mayan and one Guatemalan, both family size because I like to lie in them perpendicular. When I'm working on a character, I lie in them and daydream. They're the best tools for working that I have.

I was sitting in the toilet and I was by myself. I was tired of playing with the roller, so I said I'd better write a book.

I can't write unless I'm overlooking water.

I don't listen to music while writing; it seems to me I'm trying to make my own kind of music, and to have anything else going on is just noisy interference.

When you are writing a book, it feels as if you are simply concentrating on the world of the book and that whatever is happening in your personal life is outside the room, as it were. But maybe that's just the way you have to talk to yourself to make it possible.

I write with a Uni-Ball Onyx Micropoint on nine-by-seven bound notebooks made by a Canadian company called Blueline. After I do a few drafts, I type up the poem on a Macintosh G3 and then send it out the door.

The way to compose for me is to have lots of time.

I remember my father banging away on an IBM Selectric in the garage. He wrote his first novels on that machine. I remember its pebbly surface, its cold heft. It made its mark, literally and violently.

The exact day I became a poet was April 1, 1965, the day I bought my first typewriter.

I usually wake up around 9, and the first thing I do is make myself a cup of tea. I drink a lot of tea - green tea, white tea, and all kinds of herbal teas.