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

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

Overall there may be less censorship in America than in China, but censorship and self-censorship are not only from political pressure, but also pressures from other places in a society.

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

In China, your freedom is always limited, but this limitation applies to almost everyone. If someone does injustice to you, though, you have to find a way to avenge yourself - even by illegal measures. In a sense, injustice is more personal. This idea has always been in Chinese history. I think we read about freedom of speech, or lack of freedom of speech, in China so often. But I don't think people here in America think about how justice, or the idea of justice, is so important in a Chinese setting. It's probably more important than freedom of speech in the Chinese mindset at this moment.

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.