Ken Liu Quotes

The West has the wrong perception about Turkey itself.

When most people in the West think about Africa, is their first thought about the game reserves and who's chasing gazelles, or are they looking at Africans as people who are equally equipped to do great things, as in the West?

You have one big mythology in your favor: Everyone believes that you Europeans are impeccable. But I know you are jerks.

We've had science fiction novels where China is dominant; we've had novels where India is dominant, and I suppose it's all about getting away from that cliched old tired idea that the future belongs to the West.

Most inhabitants of these post-Soviet states also resent that people in the West consider their outlook backward and reactionary.

There's this long history of colonialism and the colonial gaze when applied to matters related to China. So a lot of conceptions about China in literary representations in the West are things you can't even fight against because they've been there so long that they've become part of the Western imagination of China.

Whenever you talk about Chinese dragons, emperors, palaces, concubines - they conjure up a whole colonial argle-bargle that has nothing to do with historical reality.

The way that China has been described in Western narratives makes it hard to tell a story that will escape the stereotypes and allow people to perceive it fresh.

I think people always want to hear that there are barriers that exist for us. But the more I started to realize artists that are kind of like me in my lane, like, if they were white or African-American, they often had trouble because it wasn't the quality of their music: they just didn't stick out.

The American understanding of China is filtered through years of politics; we rarely see the culture on its own terms.

For some members of the radical Left, particularly in the West, people in developing countries are an ideological abstraction, on whom fantasies of liberation are projected from a comfortable distance.

Many people in the West do not realise how oppressive some Muslim states are - both for men and for women. This is a cultural issue, not an Islamic one.

It's kind of cool that I know of all this great science fiction being written in China, and most of it is not really well-known in the West.

I love incredibly imaginative, speculative sci-fi.

In the West we are constantly hit with music of Middle Eastern descent signifying terror, intrigue or sorrow.

I'm from Vancouver and friends of mine will shoot something up in Vancouver and they'll be like, 'Ugh.' They've never been to Vancouver and they're like, 'They got me stuck in Vancouver for three months.' I'm like, 'No, you're being set free. It's one of the most livable cities in the entire world.'

Yes colorism does exist if you look at historically what's happened as far as crossing over to pop radio.

So much of what blacks and women contend with is centered in how we view, and how the world views, our bodies. Gestures, voices, affect.

I am extremely proud that our cinema is being recognised in the West. I want Indian cinema to get its dignity, not by giving them the kind of films they expect from us, but by making cinema in a way that carries the legacy of the mainstream masters forward.

I've always been a big fan of utopian, future, new-world stories - 'V For Vendetta,' comic books, graphic novels.

I think that there was a lot of fantasy projected onto me, and that resulted in a reappropriation and re-characterization of who I am.

In the West, people demonize Putin. They do not understand that there is a collective Putin, consisting of some millions of people who do not want to be humiliated by the West. There is a little piece of Putin in everyone.

A Scanner Darkly' is one of Dick's bleakest novels, and almost certainly his saddest.

I'm very picky with what I read. It's a specific genre of science fiction.

Trying to project our expectations and our desires onto the sci-fi being written in China now isn't terribly helpful.