Hanya Yanagihara Quotes

When I left college I thought - based on a staggeringly inadequate understanding of how the world worked - that I might like to go into book publishing.

I was an incredibly misanthrope. I couldn't relate to people my age, and I'm not sure why, as I wasn't particularly smart or interesting

I didn't even know how to talk to people, I didn't know how to talk to the press. I was just a jester. And I still feel that way. But, I mean, what haven't I learned? Everything that I know is new information because I was starting with nothing.

one never knows really how things are with other people, they just do always seem more spirited than oneself somehow.

I'm not smart enough to lie.

I wonder how it is that I’m fooling so many people, I’m doing one of the most stupid things in the world…and people seem to be falling for it.

I always thought I had crooked eyebrows and crooked teeth. That's why I never understood why people called me a beauty.

Many writers hate the shilling process, and I understand that. However, it's really the only thing about the publication process you can somewhat control. You can't affect reviews. But you can try to find your book an audience. One of the problems with the book publishing industry is that their publicity efforts tend to be spent on people who already read, and know how to discover, literary fiction.

There can hardly be a stranger commodity in the world than books. Printed by people who don't understand them; sold by people who don't understand them; bound, criticized and read by people who don't understand them; and now even written by people who don't understand them.

The author creates a book and the people accept or not accept it. The creator of a book is an author and the creator of it's fate are people.

I think people need to remember that a book isn't done after a few rewrites and a publisher isn't going to buy an 'undone' book so the hard part is making it a book that at least ten other people want to pay for to read.

Neophyte, n. There are millions upon millions of people who have been through this before-- why is it that no one can give my good advice?

Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

When I say something funny, I don’t laugh, so my friends are always like, ‘Hahahahaaaa!’ so people know. When I’m not with them, I always think, This person doesn’t know I’m funny; they just think I’m a jerk.

A novel seemed the easiest way to get what I had had in my head into the inside of other people's heads. Books are good that way.

Nice tights," I snorted. Or I tried to snort, anyway. I'm not exactly sure how, though people in books are always doing it.

Is this a topic whose time has truly come? The integration of science and religion? Or have I just written a clever book that temporarily impressed a few people and will otherwise go as quickly as it came?

I'm so used to people slagging me off. Since the beginning of my career I've been told I have no talent, I can't sing and I'm a one-hit wonder.

What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid. I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want.

He was no longer quite sure whether anything he had ever thought or felt was truly his own property, or whether his thoughts were merely a common part of the world’s store of ideas which had always existed ready-made and which people only borrowed, like books from a library.

So I'm back again to the eternal question, the one that has plagued me all my life: How Do Other People Do It? How come they were given life's rule book and I missed out? Where was I when God was dispensing capability and cop on? Looking at shoes, probably.

I calmed myself by walking into my nearby bookstore and marveling at all the books other people had written. So many people had finished and published novels; it couldn’t be so hard, right?

It’s just … everything. There are too many people. And I don’t fit in. I don’t know how to be. Nothing that I’m good at is the sort of thing that matters there. Being smart doesn’t matter—and being good with words. And when those things do matter, it’s only because people want something from me. Not because they want me.

I wanted to impress people because I was kind of a kid who was lost in the crowd - was sort of my, feeling about childhood was being part of a big family.

Do you know what they call people who hoard books? Smart.