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.

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.

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

There are people who are willing to work within the system, and people who don't want to work with the system at all.

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

I think the isolation in China also has to do with people's memories being wiped out, collective memories as well as individual memories, by the fact that the recent history has been constantly rewritten and revised.

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