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

After working as a journalist I went to a writing program at Johns Hopkins. It was interesting because it was neither journalistic nor historical, but it emphasized writing style, and afterwards I was asked to write my first book.

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

When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations and years. When you do not, you live not just by the day — but by the minute.

They probably do have an Asian Barbie.

Racism is always there underneath, but usually it is exploited in these times of economic crisis, and it's hard to find out when one slides into another.

There isn't much in the way of pure communist spirit, because the whole nation seems to be engaged in capitalistic enterprises. Much of the country still operates under government control.