You can have pride in what you do each day, but not arrogance in what you were born with.

That was a wonderful period in my life. I mean, I didn't become an artist, but somebody let me do something I loved. What a luxury, to do something you love to do.

My mother didn't teach me lessons about being Chinese as strongly as she did the notion of who I was as a female.

Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone.

She [my mother] said that if I listened to her, later I would know what she knew: where true words came from, always from up high, above everything else. And if I didn't listen to her, she said my ear would bend too easily to other people, all saying words that had no lasting meaning, because they came from the bottom of their hearts, where their own desires lived, a place where I could not belong.

Now I was a tiger that neither pounced nor lay waiting between the trees. I became an unseen spirit.

That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.