We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense, and yet it is also absolutely necessary. In writing a story, it is the place where I begin.

My mother had a very difficult childhood, having seen her own mother kill herself. So she didnt always know how to be the nurturing mother that we all expect we should have.

What is true about a person? Would I change in the same way the river changes color but still be the same person?... And then I realized it was the first time I could see the power of the wind. I couldn't see the wind itself, but I could see it carried water that filled the rivers and shaped the countryside.

My mother didn't teach me lessons about being Chinese as strongly as she did the notion of who I was as a female.

We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. -Suyuan

I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.

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.