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.

If I didn't self-censor, I would be in jail, and then I wouldn't be effective at all.

Mrs. Pang was once a nanny for me, and she spoils me the way I imagined kindhearted women would spoil an orphan, loving me for whom I am, exactly the opposite of my mother, whose love I have to earn with great effort and with little success.

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.

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.

Your characters are always your children. And while you are writing, you're keeping them safe. Now they're ready to go into the world and it's sad. I'm happy with the way the novel came out but all the characters' ending really saddened me.

A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.