Chinese language tends to be quick, economical. To know what people are saying, you always need to know what the context is.

The independents are the ones who tend to commit suicide. I'm not against this way of being in the world. Individuals have brought us many treasures. You can't just say that's a bad way of being in the world - it's not. But it's not everyone's way of being in the world.

... there is ... a big aspect of play in writing novels, and making the story more and more elaborate is just more and more fun.

These are ideas that work for many, and that may well reflect your true understanding of life.

It's human to hear stories and to know how people live and to imagine how that is for them. It's very interdependent!

When I think about why I would be a writer, why I should continue to be a writer, it seems to me one of the few things you can dowhere you're never bored.

It's a matter of whether you see the self as fundamentally in relationship to other selves or not - whether you see the boundary between self and the world as relatively permeable, which makes you "interdependent" (collectivist) in outlook, or relatively impermeable, which makes you "independent" (individualistic).