As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.

Your first duty as a writer is to write to please yourself. And you have no duty towards anyone else.

For some reason, I seem to be bothered whenever I see acts of injustice and assaults on people's civil liberties. I imagine what I write in the future will follow in that vein. Whether it's fiction or non-fiction.

It is very difficult to hang onto the relics of history.

Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.

Its a wonderful thing to see a segment of our population that is open and eager to learn more about Chinese culture. It has filtered into the mainstream. You see credit-card ads on TV with white couples and Chinese babies.

Books are the ultimate way for writers to reach immortality.