Mothers have the huge influence, and I feel like they're always teaching us from the day we're born what to be afraid of, what to be cautious of, what we should like and what we should look like. Then we spend half of our life trying to be not like them, and then we reach another part of our lives where we see these things we can't get rid of.

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.

While it is good to speak well, it is better to speak the truth.

You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.

To come so far, to lose so much and to find nothing. -Jing-mei

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.

Whenever my mother talks to me, she begins the conversation as if we were already in the middle of an argument.