What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?

I always tell my students to go back after a hundred pages and rewrite from the beginning. It's really harder if you've already finished four hundred pages and realize the first hundred aren't working.

I would never describe a cloud as 'fluffy'—in Chinese or in English.

Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.

You can write about a country without taking a stand, but you cannot write about a country without noting that there's history, and that there's politics going on. To me, that's the same if you write about America. You don't have to write about politics, but the politics have to be present in the characters.

Why do I write about China? That is a very good question. I think there are questions about China that I haven't been able to answer. The reason I write is that there are questions to which I want to find answers - or I want to find questions beyond those questions.

What a long way it is from one life to another: yet why write if not for that distance; if things can be let go, every before replaced by an after.