Clichés are static, the emotion behind them long spent. If you are tempted to use them, here is a saying of my mother’s: Fang pi bu-cho, cho pi bu-fang. Basically that translates to: "Loud farts don’t stink, and the really smelly ones don’t make a sound." In other words: When you’re full of beans, you just blow a lot of hot air. If you want to have a real impact, be deadly but silent. Oh, also recognize the difference between a bad cliché and a good quotation. My mother’s saying is a good quotation. You should use it often.

how can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?

He asked if he could recite a poem he had written that morning: 'You speak,' he said, 'the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset. I want to follow its trail to eternity.

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

I think we often write because we feel a loneliness, and people read for the same reason, and then they come away feeling a little less lonely.

Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.

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