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.

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

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

She wonders if this is what people call falling in love, the desire to be with someone for every minute of the rest of her life so strong that sometimes she is frightened of herself.

Chinese people don't care about freedom, but they do care about justice.

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.

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