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

wisdom is like a bottomless pond. You throw stones in and they sink into darkness and dissolve. Her eyes looking back do not reflect anything. I think this to myself even though I love my daughter. She and I have shared the same body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore.

And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every direction.

For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.

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

You write a book and you hope somebody will go out and pay $24.95 for what you've just said. I think books were my salvation. Books saved me from being miserable.

Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden.