Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.

My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes. She sees those who have died and now dwell in the world of Yin, ghosts who leave the mists just to visit her kitchen on Balboa Street in San Francisco.

It means we're looking one way, while following another. We're for one side and also the other. We mean what we say, but our intentions are different.

If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever. -An-mei

And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. -Rose

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