One easy mistake to make with the first novel is to expand the short story. Some things are better as a story; you cannot dilute things into a novel. I think the first hundred pages of a novel are very important. That's where you set things up: the world, the characters. Once you've set that up, it'll be much easier.

Chinese people don't care about freedom, but they do care about justice.

Only the smaller fish pay for the goverment's face-lift. The big ones - they just become bigger and fatter.

The decaying that had dragged on for too long had only turned tragedy into nuisance; death, when it strikes, better completes its annihilating act on the first try.

Some people in China don't look at freedom of speech as an abstract ideal, but more as a means to an end.

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.

In film, you have to present everything on the screen so it's the opposite of what I usually do with storytelling. It forced me to think about how people walk, where they sit at that moment. With Princess of Nebraska, it was just fun to watch because the movie was so far from the story. It was very much a different story.