God, life changes faster than you think.
I saw my mother in a different light. We all need to do that. You have to be displaced from what’s comfortable and routine, and then you get to see things with fresh eyes, with new eyes.
When I returned home that day, I saw my life as if I already knew the happy ending of a story. I looked around the house and thought, soon I will no longer have to see these walls and all the unhappiness they keep inside.
We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense, and yet it is also absolutely necessary. In writing a story, it is the place where I begin.
For woman is yin, the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.
I have always known a thing before it happens.
To save myself, I destroyed another, and in doing so, I destroyed myself.
That was a wonderful period in my life. I mean, I didn’t become an artist, but somebody let me do something I loved. What a luxury, to do something you love to do.
It is because I had so much joy that I came to have so much hate.
I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.
My mother had a look on her face that I’ll never forget. It was one of complete despair and horror, for losing Bing, for being so foolish as to think she could use faith to change fate.
Language is the tool of my trade -and I use them all – all the Englishes I grew up with.
Your only shame is to have shame.
And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every direction.
I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?
Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.
And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.
I saw what I had been fighting for: it was for me, a scared child...
And I remember wondering why it was that eating something good could make me feel so terrible, while vomiting something terrible could make me feel so good.
I began to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid.