Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.

No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.

And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every direction.

I won't be what I'm not. -Jing-mei

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

He asked if he could recite a poem he had written that morning: 'You speak,' he said, 'the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset. I want to follow its trail to eternity.

That was a wonderful period in my life. I mean, I didn't become an artist, but somebody let me do something I loved. What a luxury, to do something you love to do.