Michael Yamada

“He is asking to be treated like an American. A real american. Cuz honestly, when you think about American, what color do you see? white? black? We (the Chinese) have been here 200 years....the German, the Dutch, the Italian, they came here in the turn of century; they are Americans. Why doesn't this face ("yellow") register as American? Is it because we make the story too complicated?”
― Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown

“So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Like Achilles, the hero who forgot his heel, or like Icarus who, flying close to the sun, forgot that his wings were made of wax, we should be wary when triumphant ideas seem unassailable, for then there is all the more reason to predict their downfall.”
― Dwight Longenecker, The Romance of Religion: Fighting for Goodness, Truth, and Beauty

“This is it. The root of it all. The real history of yellow people in America. Two hundred years of being perpetual foreigners.”
― Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown