David Henry Hwang Quotes

Death with honor is better than life… life with dishonor.

My new play ‘Chinglish,’ which will go to Broadway, is about a white American businessman who goes to a provincial capital in China, hoping to make a deal there. It’s bilingual. And it’s about trying to communicate across language and cultural barriers.

Now I see — we are always most revolted by the things hidden within us.

I visited a new cultural center in Shanghai in 2005 that was pretty much perfect, except for the really badly translated Chinglish signs: a handicapped restroom that said ‘Deformed Man’s Toilet,’ that kind of thing.

Yellow Face marks my summation of multiculturalism.

You aren’t allowed to ask at auditions, legally, a person’s race.

The West believes the East, deep down, wants to be dominated, because a woman can’t think for herself

Tonight, I’ve finally learned to tell fantasy from reality. And, knowing the difference, I choose fantasy.

Why, in the Peking Opera, are women’s roles played by men?…Because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act.

Time flies when you’re being stupid.

You can’t be a playwright without believing there’s an audience for adventurous work.

We are all prisoners of our time and place.

This is the ultimate cruelty, isn’t it? That I can talk and talk and to anyone listening, it’s only air–too rich a diet to be swallowed by a mundane world.

I define the American dream as the ability to imagine a way that you want your life to turn out, and have a reasonable hope that you can achieve that.

With a musical, you kind of have to do a mind-meld with the book-writer, the lyricist, the composer, the director – sometimes the producer. I think that’s a reason why musicals are the hardest form.

I am almost famous in China, because I have that Broadway cachet.

To me to write well is to battle stereotypes. To write well is to create three-dimensional characters that seem human.

We all deal with failure. If you’re lucky to have a long career, it’s part of the experience.

‘Yellow Face’ marks my summation of multiculturalism.

Even if you’re lucky to have a play on Broadway like ‘Chinglish,’ you don’t necessarily earn enough off it to support the years it takes to get there.

I knew I was Chinese, but growing up, it never occurred to me that that had any particular implication or that it should differentiate me in any way. I thought it was a minor detail, like having red hair.

There is something very unique in American iconography about this notion of the pursuit of happiness.

I visited a new cultural center in Shanghai in 2005 that was pretty much perfect, except for the really badly translated Chinglish signs: a handicapped restroom that said Deformed Mans Toilet, that kind of thing.

I’m interested in internationalism. It’s the new multiculturalism. How we deal with each other isn’t sufficient any more. It’s about time we examine how we interact with the rest of the world we live in.

There’s something about China and its rush to capitalism that I find confusing. At the same time, we live in an America where capitalists oppose any government interference with free markets, while in China you have a very controlled, state-planned market where economic growth is better than ours.

I’ve never quite understood the idea of a “season.” Whenever an artistic director says to me, ‘I have this slot,’ I always start to feel we’re parking cars or something.

I think that plays are probably the most personal, because it’s just me in charge, but sometimes it’s just really – I think that there’s honor in being a good artist, and there’s honor in being a good ‘craftsperson.’

Chinese culture in general is not very religious. Confucianism is more a code of ethics than a religion, and ancestor worship is a way for parents to control you even after theyre dead.

I’m happy. Which often looks like crazy.

Sometimes I hate you, sometimes I hate myself, but always I miss you