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.

I am fascinated by language in daily life: the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.

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.

Only two kinds of daughters, she shouted in Chinese. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!

I started a second novel seven times and I had to throw them away.

too much happiness always overflowed into tears of sorrow.

Clichés are static, the emotion behind them long spent. If you are tempted to use them, here is a saying of my mother’s: Fang pi bu-cho, cho pi bu-fang. Basically that translates to: "Loud farts don’t stink, and the really smelly ones don’t make a sound." In other words: When you’re full of beans, you just blow a lot of hot air. If you want to have a real impact, be deadly but silent. Oh, also recognize the difference between a bad cliché and a good quotation. My mother’s saying is a good quotation. You should use it often.