Carolyn

“Writing didn't used to be so miserable. God I miss my high school days. I could float my notebook open to an empty page and see possibility instead of frustration. When I took real pleasure in stringing words and sentences together just to see how they sounded. When writing was an act of sheer imagination, of taking myself away somewhere else, of creating something that was only for me. I miss writing before I met Athena Liu.”
― Rebecca F. Kuang, Yellowface

“I would have liked Allie better if she were a shy, bookish type I could have taken on shopping sprees at indie bookstores instead of an iPhone-addicted, TikTok-obsessed basic bitch in training.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“A writer needs to be read. I want to move people's hearts. I want my books in stores all over the world. I couldn't stand to be like Mom or Rory, living their little and self-contained lives with no great projects or prospects to propel them from one chapter to the next. I want the world to wait with bated breath for what I will say next. I want my words to last forever. I want to be eternal, permanent; when I'm gone, I want to leave behind a mountain of pages that scream, Juniper Song was here, and she told us what was on her mind.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“He was no poet. He despised high-flown sentiment, always had. One of the main aims of poetry, as far as he could see, and his classical education had confirmed as much, was to persuade women into your bed who otherwise might not agree to go there, and make everyone think you were a devil of a fine fellow, rather than a hopeless libertine, while you were doing it. A clever trick, or a cheap one, he was not quite sure. Both, perhaps.”
― Emma Orchard, A Duke of One's Own