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

Dementia was like a truth serum.

Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden.

How do I create something out of nothing? And how do I create my own life? I think it is by questioning, and saying to myself that there are no absolute truths.

Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.

I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?

I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, to eat my own bitterness. And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.