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.

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

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

Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.

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.

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

The decaying that had dragged on for too long had only turned tragedy into nuisance; death, when it strikes, better completes its annihilating act on the first try.