I wanted to write stories for myself. At first it was purely an aesthetic thing about craft. I just wanted to become good at the art of something. And writing was very private.

Your life is what you see in front of you. -An-mei

Why do you think you are missing something you never had?

Yesterday my daughter said to me, 'My marriage is falling apart.' And now all she can do is watch it falling.

And I remember wondering why it was that eating something good could make me feel so terrible, while vomiting something terrible could make me feel so good.

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.

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.