In [writing] fiction, every sentence is its own reward.

Sometimes you change to survive, and some things you don't give up, or you're too prideful, and then you think well, what's pride? Is it a good thing? Maybe it's a bad thing. That's what I look at in my life. It's always a question in my life I look at, and I never find the answer, because if I did, probably I wouldn't have books to write.

Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.

I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice.

My mother didn't teach me lessons about being Chinese as strongly as she did the notion of who I was as a female.

God, life changes faster than you think.

My mother imparted her daily truths so she could help my older brothers and me rise above our circumstances. We lived in San Francisco's Chinatown. Like most of the other Chinese children who played in the back alleys of restaurants and curio shops, I didn't think we were poor. My bowl was always full, three five-course meals every day, beginning with a soup full of mysterious things I didn't want to know the names of.