In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.

If you are greedy, what is inside you is what makes you always hungry.

My mother said I was a clingy kid until I was about four. I also remember that from the age of eight she and I fought almost every day.

It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.

You can have pride in what you do each day, but not arrogance in what you were born with.

Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother's English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It's my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world

My parents told me I would become a doctor and then in my spare time I would become a concert pianist. So, both my day job and my spare time were sort of taken care of.