The greatest calling of all is to have a literary life.

I love research. I'd go so far as to say I'm a research fanatic.

I know a lot about women and their suffering, but I still know almost nothing about men.

Maybe we're all like that with our mothers. They seem ordinary until one day they're extraordinary.

I am an eighth Chinese, and I come from a large Chinese-American family in Los Angeles.

You can't fight your fate...It is predestined.

If it is perfectly acceptable for a widow to disfigure herself or commit suicide to save face for her husband's family, why should a mother not be moved to extreme action by the loss of a child or children? We are their caretakers. We love them. We nurse them when they are sick. . . But no woman should live longer than her children. It is against the law of nature. If she does, why wouldn't she wish to leap from a cliff, hang from a branch, or swallow lye?