It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success.

People there only dream that it is China, because if you are Chinese you can never let go of China in your mind.

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.

I've always been a magnet for guilt.

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.

Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother's English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It's my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world

I was punched breathless by the strongest emotions I have ever felt and they are now stored in my intuition as a writer.