And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. -Rose

It was a distorted form of inverse logic: If hopes never come true, then hope for what you don't want.

I've always been a magnet for guilt.

But later that day, the streets of Kweilin were strewn with newspapers reporting great Kuomintang victories, and on top of these papers, like fresh fish from a butcher, lay rows of people - men, women and children who had never lost hope, but had lost their lives instead.

When I returned home that day, I saw my life as if I already knew the happy ending of a story. I looked around the house and thought, soon I will no longer have to see these walls and all the unhappiness they keep inside.

Language is the tool of my trade -and I use them all - all the Englishes I grew up with

I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary; we did not have any books in the house.