You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying. -An-mei

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.

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.

You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.

I like to go somewhere where I learn something I didn't know before, like the Dry Tortugas between Florida and Cuba.

How I saw in her my own true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside my bones... Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain. This is how a daughter honors her mother. It is shou so deep it is in your bones. The pain of the flesh is nothing. The pain you must forget. Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother before her. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh.

We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. -Suyuan