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

I think I've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success.

Chaos is the penance for leisure.

Can you imagine how it is, to want to be neither inside nor outside, to want to be nowhere and disappear?

My sisters and I stand, arms around each other, laughind and wiping the tears from each others eyes. The flash of the Polaroid goes off and my family hands me the snapshot. My sisters and I watch quietly together, eager to see what develops. Ghe grey-greensurface changes to the bright colors of our three images, sharpening and deepening all at once. And although we don't speak, I know we all see it: Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in suprise to see, her long-cherished wish.

We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense, and yet it is also absolutely necessary. In writing a story, it is the place where I begin.

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