I have my own dying empire to contend with, and I do not wish for any other.

Usually, with a novel, you start with no idea what to do because your job is to create convincing characters and then they just run around getting crazy. The problem with writing a memoir, obviously, is you can't do that because you sort of know what's going to happen. Because you're the character.

I love librarians more than any other people in the world. When I was an immigrant kid, they’ve made me feel like a human being and they gave me books that taught me English.

We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.

I feel safe with him because he is so not my ideal and I feel like I can be myself because I'm not in love with him.

She was clothed entirely in two large swatches of leather, the leather fake and shiny in a self-mocking way, absolutely correct for 1993, the first year when mocking the mainstream had become the mainstream.

After you publish a book, you become a writer and you're supposed to take it very seriously. You're supposed to show up at your desk - although frankly, I don't have a desk, I write in bed - you're supposed to show up at your bed and produce work. I think it's a little bit like work. I like to have fun with it, do things like make silly book trailers. I don't want to take this too seriously.