Everybody contributes something to the system, and everybody suffers from the system.

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

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.

No one is immune from either taking the wrong action or not taking action at all, but the sense that something is completely out of a person's control is stronger in China.

Every place is a good place, only time goes wrong.

But loneliness is as delusive a belief in the pertinence of the world as is love: in choosing to feel lonely, as in choosing to love, one carves a space next to oneself to be filled by others - a friend, a lover, a toy poodle, a violinist on the radio.

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.