Top 122 Quotes & Sayings by Gene Luen Yang

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Chinese novelist Gene Luen Yang.

Last updated on September 17, 2024.

Gene Luen Yang is an American cartoonist. He is a frequent lecturer on the subjects of graphic novels and comics, at comic book conventions and universities, schools, and libraries. In addition, he was the Director of Information Services and taught computer science at Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland, California. In 2012, Yang joined the faculty at Hamline University, as a part of the Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults (MFAC) program. In 2016, the U.S. Library of Congress named him Ambassador for Young People's Literature. That year he became the third graphic novelist, alongside Lauren Redniss, to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.

Chinese - Novelist | Born: August 9, 1973

Source: Wikipedia

Superman has been around for so long; he's been around for, what, eight decades now? And he goes through these different eras where different aspects of who he is get emphasized.

Gene Luen Yang

I've tried to write from my own understanding of identity in all my comics, whether it's about superheroes or historical conflicts or monkey gods.

Gene Luen Yang

'Shadow Hero' was my first superhero story. I don't know why it took so long.

Gene Luen Yang

I started 'American Born Chinese' as a mini-comic. I would write and draw a chapter, photocopy a hundred or so copies at the corner photocopy store, and then try to sell them on consignment through local comics shops. If I could sell maybe half a dozen, I'd be doing okay.

Gene Luen Yang

I think a lot of the things in my life that I become most passionate about, and most excited about, are all from comics.

Gene Luen Yang

Immigrant parents dream that their children will find a place in their new home, and they willingly suffer hardships in service to that dream. That was certainly true of my parents.

Gene Luen Yang

During the Cultural Revolution, the communists came in, and what they wanted to do was eradicate all sense of traditional Chinese culture.

Gene Luen Yang

I kind of just write what I like to write. I'm thankful that readers of different ages seem to connect to my stories. I don't consciously think about age demographics when I'm working on my comics.

Gene Luen Yang

A lot of Asians and Asian-Americans have liver problems. If you basically ask anybody who is Asian, they or one of their relatives will have some sort of a liver issue, and the liver actually falls into the jurisdiction of the gastroenterologist.

Gene Luen Yang

When I was growing up, I did go to the arcade. We had a neighborhood arcade, and my friends and I would go fairly regularly.

Gene Luen Yang

I love the interplay between words and pictures. I love the fact that in comics, your pictures are acting like words, presenting themselves to be read.

Gene Luen Yang

The thing about research is that there's no end. You constantly have this fear that an expert who knows more than you will call you out on some detail in your book.

Gene Luen Yang

I wanted to make an explicitly educational comic that taught readers the concepts I covered in my introductory programming class. That's what 'Secret Coders' is. It's both a fun story about a group of tweens who discover a secret coding school, and an explanation of some foundational ideas in computer science.

Gene Luen Yang

Like all of us, I don't think Facebook is 100% evil, but there are aspects of it that move towards evilness. It's true of all the major Silicon Valley companies, that there are aspects to all of them that move towards evilness, but I don't believe they're 100% evil.

Gene Luen Yang

When 'American Born Chinese' started getting a lot of attention, I freaked out a little bit because I realized that up until then I had just been doing comics by following my gut. I didn't really know much about plot structure or anything; I kind of just followed my gut.

Gene Luen Yang

The rumor is Chu Hing really wanted the 'Green Turtle' to be Chinese American, but the publisher didn't think that would sell. If you read those books, the hero almost always has his back facing the camera so you can't see his face. When he turns around, his face is obscured.

Gene Luen Yang

In my classroom, I would start my lessons with a quick review of an old topic. Then, I would introduce a new topic. Finally, I would give my students a problem to solve on their own, one that would reinforce what I'd just taught.

Gene Luen Yang

I think, pretty much like everyone around my age, I grew up playing those classic video games. I wouldn't say I was addicted to them, but I definitely liked them.

Gene Luen Yang

We're afraid of writing characters different from ourselves because we're afraid of getting it wrong. We're afraid of what the Internet might say.

Gene Luen Yang

In 2000, Pope John Paul II canonized 120 saints of China, 87 of whom were ethnically Chinese. My home church was incredibly excited because this was the first time the Roman Catholic Church acknowledged Chinese citizens in this way.

Gene Luen Yang

I finished 'American Born Chinese' in 2005, so after that, I started actively researching the Boxer Rebellion.

Gene Luen Yang

Comics are such a powerful educational tool. Simply put, there are certain kinds of information that are best communicated through sequential visuals.

Gene Luen Yang

Writing, for me, is very inspiration-dependent. And inspiration can be a jerk.

Gene Luen Yang

Every superhero has this superhero identity and a civilian identity. A lot of their lives are about code switching.

Gene Luen Yang

Many Japanese families moved to Taiwan during the occupation. Then, when the war ended, they were forced to move back. And at the macro level, the Taiwanese had every reason to cheer when the Japanese left. The Japanese military could often be incredibly brutal. The Taiwanese lived as second-class citizens on their own land.

Gene Luen Yang

The Boxer Rebellion is a war that was fought on Chinese soil in the year 1900. The Europeans, the Japanese and their Chinese Christian allies were on one side. On the other were poor, starving, illiterate Chinese teenagers whom the Europeans referred to as the Boxers.

Gene Luen Yang

To be able to write 'Superman,' to be able to work with the legendary artist who is John Romita Jr., I signed on as soon as I could.

Gene Luen Yang

I talk about religion because it's one of the ways human beings find power and belonging. Religion is more than just that - I think faith traditions give us ways to talk about experiences of the numinous, too - but power and belonging are a big part of it.

Gene Luen Yang

I work at a high school, and we have an anime and manga club.

Gene Luen Yang

We have to allow ourselves the freedom to make mistakes, including cultural mistakes, in our first drafts. I believe it's okay to get cultural details wrong in your first draft. It's okay if stereotypes emerge. It just means that your experience is limited, that you're human.

Gene Luen Yang

For 'Boxers and Saints', the tension between Eastern and Western ways of thinking was very personal for me, and I needed to control every aspect.

Gene Luen Yang

In my research, I learned that the Boxers' kung fu wasn't all that formalized. The vast majority of them didn't belong to some age-old martial arts tradition. They were basically poor, starving teenagers doing the best they could to figure out how to fight, relying more on their mystical beliefs than formal training.

Gene Luen Yang

'Shadow Hero' was a dream to work on.

Gene Luen Yang

I general don't color my stuff - I'm pretty horrible with color. Usually, I'll get one of my cartoonist friends to help me out.

Gene Luen Yang

I got these big coffee table books about Chinese opera from the local library, and I loved looking through them. I loved studying the intricate costumes and figuring out how to 'cartoonify' them.

Gene Luen Yang

In the early '90s, I was finishing up my adolescence. I visited my local comic-book store on a weekly basis, and one week I found a book on the stands called 'Xombi,' published by Milestone Media.

Gene Luen Yang

I minored in creative writing in college, and I've played with the idea of doing something more hybrid, but comics are my first love.

Gene Luen Yang

In traditional Asian arts, the word and the picture always sit next to each other. I have an aunt, a Chinese brush painter, who told me that when you do a Chinese brush painting, you have to pair the image up with some poetry.

Gene Luen Yang

My first job was as a programmer. So I feel like I'm familiar with the information technology sector and the information technology culture.

Gene Luen Yang

I'm a cartoonist. I write and draw comic books and graphic novels. I'm also a coder.

Gene Luen Yang

I think every time you work with another collaborator, there's an adjustment process where you figure out the other person's strengths, and that has definitely happened for me.

Gene Luen Yang

The premise of 'Secret Coders' is reminiscent of 'Harry Potter.' An intrepid band of tweens stumbles upon a secret school, only instead of teaching magic, the school teaches coding.

Gene Luen Yang

Dwayne McDuffie was one of my favorite writers. When I was growing up, he was one of the few African Americans working in American comics.

Gene Luen Yang

'The Green Turtle' wasn't all that popular. He lasted only five issues of Blazing Comics before disappearing into obscurity.

Gene Luen Yang

Religion and culture are two important ways in which we as humans find our identity. That's certainly true for me.

Gene Luen Yang

Ch'in Shih-huang is the first emperor of China. He united seven separate kingdoms into a single nation. He built the Great Wall and was buried with the terra-cotta soldiers. The Chinese have mixed feelings about him. They're proud of the nation he created, but he was a maniacal tyrant.

Gene Luen Yang

When I looked into the lives of the Chinese saints, I discovered that many of them had died during the Boxer Rebellion, a war that occurred on Chinese soil in the year 1900.

Gene Luen Yang

I love hearing people who are smarter than me talk about my comics. It makes me feel smarter.

Gene Luen Yang

I was a huge fan of the Bruce Timm animated series and, of course, the live action 'Lois & Clark' series. I watched that when I was in college.

Gene Luen Yang

For 'Boxers & Saints,' I started by reading a couple of articles on the Internet, then writing a really rough outline, then getting more hardcore into the research. I went to a university library once a week for a year, year and a half.

Gene Luen Yang

I was a superhero fan in the '90s, so I'm definitely familiar with John Romita, Jr. In fact, when I was in high school, I would go to local conventions and line up and get his signature.

Gene Luen Yang

I majored in Computer Science at U.C. Berkeley and worked as a software developer for a couple of years. Then I taught high school computer science for over a decade and a half in Oakland, California.

Gene Luen Yang

If I'm writing about a modern-day suburb, there's going to be details of the home and furniture, and if I'm writing about a historical period, those details, those pieces of the world are going to be there as well, but they'll be simplified, because I'm cartooning it.

Gene Luen Yang

'Boxers' was more time consuming simply because it was longer, but 'Saints' was definitely harder. I think it's just hard to talk about faith in general.

Gene Luen Yang

When I got the job with 'Superman,' it felt like somebody threw me into the ocean. I was just trying to figure it out, to figure out how to tread water. Lucky for me, I'm part of a great team.

Gene Luen Yang

Creativity requires input, and that's what research is. You're gathering material with which to build.

Gene Luen Yang

This is a profession for me, but I started off as a self-publisher working on my own schedule and my own stuff before moving on to graphic novels with First Second Books, where there was definitely a schedule, but it was very different from monthly comics.

Gene Luen Yang

Any superhero, regardless of how different they are from Superman, recalls Superman in some way. They're either pushing against Superman or reflecting Superman; there's something about them that comes from Superman.

Gene Luen Yang

My experiences growing up in both a Chinese American household and the Catholic Church define much of who I am.

Gene Luen Yang

It's just nerve-wracking in general to write 'Superman,' right? I'm a life-long superhero fan, and he is the character that kicked off the entire genre.

Gene Luen Yang

Top 122 Quotes & Sayings by Gene Luen Yang

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