I would still like to have that luxury, to be able to just sit and draw for hours and hours and hours. In a way, that’s what I do as a writer.
I wanted to write stories for myself. At first it was purely an aesthetic thing about craft. I just wanted to become good at the art of something. And writing was very private.
I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn’t realize that there is something called originality and your own voice.
My mother said I was a clingy kid until I was about four. I also remember that from the age of eight she and I fought almost every day.
I have survivor skills. Some of that is superficial – what I present to people outwardly – but what makes people resilient is the ability to find humour and irony in situations that would otherwise overpower you.
I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn’t understand her English, because she was Chinese.
I felt like a rich vagabond who had passed through the world paving my way with gold fairy dust, then realizing too late that the path disintegrated as soon as I passed over it.
You can’t have intentions without consequences. The question is, who pays for the consequences? Saving fish from drowning. Same thing. Who’s saved? Who’s not?
We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. -Suyuan.
Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh. -An-mei.
I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind. -Lindo.
But I was no longer sacared. I could see what was inside me. -Lindo.
All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. -Ying Ying.
You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying. -An-mei.
And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. -Rose.
But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better. -Jing-mei.
Writing is an extreme privilege but it’s also a gift. It’s a gift to yourself and it’s a gift of giving a story to someone.
If she doesn’t speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn’t try, she can lose her chance forever. -An-mei.
But I don’t have anything left inside of me to figure out where I fit in or what I want. If I want anything, it’s to know what’s possible to want.
The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.