And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.

I feel I've always been writing about self-identity. How do we become who we are? So I'm just writing from experience what's concerned me.

The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.

That is the saddest part when you lose someone you love - that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost? Maybe you lost more maybe less, then thousand different things that come from your memory or imagination - and you do not know which is which, which was true, which is false.

All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. -Ying Ying

So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. the pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and giver her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.

You write a book and you hope somebody will go out and pay $24.95 for what you've just said. I think books were my salvation. Books saved me from being miserable.