Hanya Yanagihara Quotes

When I first started writing plays I couldn't write good dialogue because I didn't respect how black people talked. I thought that in order to make art out of their dialogue I had to change it, make it into something different. Once I learned to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I let them start talking.

People often ask me if I feel discriminated against as a black female director. I don't. I'm actually offered a ton of stuff. But I only want to direct what I write. And I prefer to focus on black female characters. What's most important to me is to put characters up onscreen who are not perfect, but who are human and flawed.

Stax was rejoicing in the difference in who we are, and that's what you see in the film.

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.

I remember while I was at school some of my Muslim friends talked about a handful of people spoiling things in every culture. Hatred or hurt or pain isn't specific to a religion. I think it's a matter of acceptance. The one thing the world has to accept is everybody is different. What is normal to us is different and unusual to somebody else.

I don't take roles I can't respect. If I can't find a reason to be respectful of the character, I won't do it because I couldn't do it justice.

I think the world is always going to be as diverse as it always has been.

I sense a kind of fear of writing black or Asian characters from non-ethnic writers, who perhaps feel that they don't know the culture and therefore can't write about it. By and large, if there's an Asian character, I might get a call. But if the character is called 'Philip,' the chances are I won't.

I love a mask. It's why I've got a thing about good writing. When you're acting, you're going into someone else's work. You're behind his words; it's not you.

As an actor it's your job to empathise with your character regardless of whether they have a different sexual orientation, spiritual beliefs, or anything.

In a lot of films, they're showing more complete, developed characters of diverse ethnic backgrounds. The larger concern is to be able to tastefully explore the stereotypes, and still move past them to see the core of people.

Foreigners are not like the people I am used to here.

I feel the same way about Shondaland I feel about Africa and Greece. I feel pretty in both places. Men look at me like I'm a novelty, and women think I'm just cool. I feel absolutely at home immediately. I'm not altering myself to fit in. I'm walking in just as I am. And there are open arms stretched out to greet me.

We have to accept the world has become this place where we have to interact with people who are very different from us.

Canadians are so different and so lovely.

The biggest and the most important thing my mother told me is to be a good actor you first need to be a really good human being and an honest person.

We are a diverse people, man.

Seriously, how many times do you see Asian-American characters that have an actual family, feelings? You don't see them love and be sad and have all the human emotions. I think that 'Gilmore Girls' is one of the very, very few where we were offered a chance to explore these characters multidimensionally.

When depicting Asian people in movies, books, and television or as historical figures, it's more important to humanize them and give them all of the dimensions of humanity, and that includes sexuality. Ascribe the human the full range of human qualities.

If you are other, you don't think twice about hiring people who are other.

The first thing that happens is the cleansing of the former character. I don't think a lot of actors talk about it, but there is usually a process where you essentially purge yourself of the character played prior to the movie. Then you want to think about what the character represents, and you write down all of the elements about this character and then take the time to find some synchronicity and start breathing the character.

I believe that one of the most sound ideas in dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific. Universality, I think, emerges from truthful identity of what is.

It's easier to write about heartbreak after you've had your heart broken. You have more material to draw from, you can extrapolate from your own experiences and make reasonable assumptions about how your characters would feel and act.

One piece of advice I have is: Want something else more than success. Success is a lovely thing, but your desire to say something, your worth, and your identity shouldn’t rely on it, because it’s not guaranteed and it’s not permanent and it’s not sufficient. So work hard, fall in love with the writing — the characters, the story, the words, the themes — and make sure that you are who you are regardless of your life circumstances. That way, when the good things come, they don’t warp you, and when the bad things hit you, you don’t fall apart.

I'm not against White writers writing about Blacks as long as they are as objective as say James McPherson writing about an Irish American janitor in his brilliant short story "Gold Coast."