We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.

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.

My favorite anything is always relative to the context of present time, place and mood. When I finish a book and want to immediately find another by the same author and no other, that author is elevated to my favorite.

How do I create something out of nothing? And how do I create my own life? I think it is by questioning, and saying to myself that there are no absolute truths.

I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn't understand her English, because she was Chinese.

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.

In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.