I would still like to have that luxury, to be able to just sit and draw for hours and hours and hours. In a way, that's what I do as a writer.

My mother imparted her daily truths so she could help my older brothers and me rise above our circumstances. We lived in San Francisco's Chinatown. Like most of the other Chinese children who played in the back alleys of restaurants and curio shops, I didn't think we were poor. My bowl was always full, three five-course meals every day, beginning with a soup full of mysterious things I didn't want to know the names of.

I like to go somewhere where I learn something I didn't know before, like the Dry Tortugas between Florida and Cuba.

Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.

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

I saw a girl complaining that the pain of not being seen was unbearable... Now I have perfect understanding. I have already experienced the worst. After this, there is no worse possible thing.

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