https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/author-alexander-chee-on-his-advice-to-writers.html

I was with him recently at NYU for a night of readings. He said two things that night that I still think of. “What is pretentious but to have the pretense to the assumption that you belong here?” And, “If you are an Asian-American writer, artist, poet, or painter, prepare to be unfathomable, inconceivable.”