Iris Chang Quotations

I don't mind solitude. I love talking to other people, but I do need my space.

I may attempt a novel. I think that no matter what you write, it requires being honest with oneself, and you have to pull yourself out of the whirlwind of daily life.

Whatever is not commonly seen is condemned as alien.

The worst... was what the Pakistani soldiers did to the Bengali women after their failed rebellion.

There are now hundreds of thousands of new engineers that are being trained in China. If people start finding themselves losing their jobs, not to the Chinese here but because China has become such a dominant force-then there could very well be a backlash.

Racism is always there underneath, but usually it is exploited in these times of economic crisis, and it's hard to find out when one slides into another.

We have to keep in mind that it's not just about the numbers of people who died; it's also the manner which many of these victims met their deaths.

I received an honorary doctorate for my work. Maybe one of these works is considered the equivalent of a Ph.D.

Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.

I have certainly amassed many historical research gathering skills.

It's a wonderful thing to see a segment of our population that is open and eager to learn more about Chinese culture. It has filtered into the mainstream. You see credit-card ads on TV with white couples and Chinese babies.

For some reason, I seem to be bothered whenever I see acts of injustice and assaults on people's civil liberties. I imagine what I write in the future will follow in that vein. Whether it's fiction or non-fiction.

It is very difficult to hang onto the relics of history.

Now, most of the new immigrants coming to this country are from Asia as opposed to Europe.

Your first duty as a writer is to write to please yourself. And you have no duty towards anyone else.

After working as a journalist I went to a writing program at Johns Hopkins. It was interesting because it was neither journalistic nor historical, but it emphasized writing style, and afterwards I was asked to write my first book.

I have to finish this book tour of almost 30 cities.

There isn't much discussion of ruling class in America even in Boston, probably one of the most class-conscious cities in the country?

If the conditions were right there could be great acceptance. Often it is only when they pose an economic or political threat that it turns really ugly.

Often, what you see in the media is driven by economic forces.

It was clear that the special interest groups in California really wanted the Chinese to be shut out of the country, because that was where the racial tension was the greatest.

The whole story of the comfort women, the system of forced sexual slavery, the medical experiments of Unit 731, is not something that is in the US psyche. That is changing because many books are coming out.

There is also an epidemic of infertility in this country. There are more women who have put off child-bearing in favor of their professional lives. For them, the only way they are going to have a family is to adopt from China.

There isn't much in the way of pure communist spirit, because the whole nation seems to be engaged in capitalistic enterprises. Much of the country still operates under government control.

When the Chinese first came to San Francisco, they were actually welcomed by the mayor and they had special ceremonies for them-again this is when their colony was very small, only a few Chinese.

When you take something extremely broad, then it is not a work of expansion or work of compression. It's hard because you have to decide what to throw out.

It's much more difficult to work on a broad subject than on a specific one, because even if it's hard to find the information, if you look hard enough for something specific you will find it, and you will discover things that you wouldn't have thought of before.

Of course, in the United States, which at the time was a very young country, there were also class distinctions. They weren't as pronounced, but they quickly evolved as well.

Somebody who was born in this country who visited China would later face difficulty getting back in to the USA. We have to keep in mind that the struggles of the Chinese against these exclusion laws really laid down the foundations of civil rights law.

When you count all the obscure monographic books, there have been many. I probably have most of them in my library.

Men all across China are going to have trouble finding wives in just a few years.

I have friends who are Caucasian who have pitched ideas for a Chinese-American show, and there is great resistance in Hollywood and the networks to support that.

There is a perception that the Chinese started out downtrodden and abused in the 19th century and gradually rose to the top of society as model minorities, and you see them winning Nobel Prizes and getting into our best colleges. But it is not a linear progression. Things don't always get better.

Even if you wanted to be a hermit, people come out looking for you. I don't want to cloister myself away, but it is important for me to write about issues that have universal significance. One of them that have resonated with me all my life has been the theme of injustice.

As the Chinese grew in numbers, the immigrant population grew to the extent that it became a huge economic threat, there were efforts among white workers to organize among themselves politically, and what was unfortunate was that both major parties adopted anti-Chinese platforms.

I started off majoring in math and computer science and then majored in journalism because I knew I wanted to become a writer one day.

Often when times are good and when the US is on good diplomatic terms with China, the Chinese are viewed as a bridge between the two countries.

Often what is deeply offensive to Chinese-Americans that they are really well-represented in medicine, and yet on all these doctors' shows you hardly see any Chinese-American faces.

Some quirk in human nature allows even the most unspeakable acts of evil to become banal within minutes, provided that they occur far enough away to pose no personal threat

This by no means the last word on the Chinese in America. This is my personal interpretation of the 150-year epic history of Chinese in this country.

Congressman David Woo, when he wanted to give a speech at the Department of Energy-ironically to celebrate Asian History month-they stopped him. They wouldn't let him in. This was shortly after the Wen Ho Lee scandal.

Not only do people go into Chinese restaurants, but people are more likely to work with other Chinese-Americans, more likely to marry them.

California, where the anti-Chinese racism was greatest, became a very crucial swing state during presidential elections, and therefore both parties had to court California.

General histories-there have been a few that have served as pioneering books.

When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations and years. When you do not, you live not just by the day — but by the minute.

They probably do have an Asian Barbie.

The spoken word vanished with the wind. Likewise, the unrecorded life disappears as if it never existed.

Books are the ultimate way for writers to reach immortality.

Its a wonderful thing to see a segment of our population that is open and eager to learn more about Chinese culture. It has filtered into the mainstream. You see credit-card ads on TV with white couples and Chinese babies.

As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.

Please believe in THE POWER OF ONE. One person can make an enormous difference in the world. One person - actually, one idea - can start a war, or end one, or subvert an entire power structure. One discovery can cure a disease or spawn new technology to benefit or annihilate the human race. You as ONE individual can change millions of lives. Think big. Do not limit your vision and do not ever compromise your dreams or ideals.

I certainly didn't have a three-book plan or a 10-year plan when I worked on the first book.

The Committee of 100 commissioned a survey in which they found that Asian-American candidates are the most unpopular of all the races. They found that people were less likely to vote for Chinese-Americans than other minorities.