There is a certain amount of politeness here in America, which is probably more than just politeness.

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

It is a Chinese tradition that everyone has to be in everyone else's life.

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.

To write about a struggle amidst the struggling: one must hope that the muddling will end someday.

The boy will remain a son and never become a father. He will be forgotten by the crowd once his blood is rinsed clean from the ground; his sister will think of him but soon she will forget him, too. He will live on only in Han's memory, a child punished not for his own insincerity but someone else's disbelief.

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.