too much happiness always overflowed into tears of sorrow.

It felt like all the truth got whitewashed with fake happiness,” she said, “only it was not happy and it was worse than fake. It was dangerous

There are a lot of people who think that’s what’s needed to be successful is always being right, always being careful, always picking the right path.

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.

When the anesthesia of love wears off,you suffer the pain of consequence.

A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.

I have a writer’s memory which makes everything worse than maybe it actually was.

But later I threw away my foolish innocence to protect myself. And then I taught my daughter, your mother, to shed her innocence so she would not be hurt as well.

No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.

At the beginning of my career as a writer, I felt I knew nothing of Chinese culture. I was writing about emotional confusion with my mother related to our different beliefs. Hers was based in...

I’m open to reading almost anything – fiction, nonfiction – as long as I know from the first sentence or two that this is a voice I want to listen to for a good long...

My mother believed in God’s will for many years. It was af if she had turned on a celestial faucet and goodness kept pouring out. She said it was faith that kept all these good...

And for all those years, we never talked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible accusations afterward at the piano bench. All that remained unchecked, like a betrayal that was now unbreakable. So...

You can get sucked into the idea that, ‘Gosh, this is impressive. Maybe I should do this. It will look good.’ Or ‘I’ll write like this because it will impress that critic.’

Chinese artists have been subversive over thousands of years, taking what they think of the government and embedding it in their art. There might be censorship of not going as far as they might.

…you have to believe in its principles. Anything is possible, as long as it’s for the good of the world. Make the exception. Live exceptionally. And if you can’t do that, maybe we should consider...

She would be quiet at first. Then she would say a word about something small, something she had noticed, and then another word, and another, each one flung out like a little piece of sand,...

I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.

Auntie An-mei had cried before she left for China, thinking she would make her brother very rich and happy by communist standards. But when she got home, she cried to me that everyone had a...

A psychiatrist does not want you to wake up. He tells you to dream some more, to find the pond and pour more tears into it. And really, he’s just another bird drinking from your...

People talk about this ‘bucket list’: ‘I need to go to this country, I need to skydive.’ Whereas I need to think as much as I can, to feel as much as I can, to...

My parents told me I would become a doctor and then in my spare time I would become a concert pianist. So, both my day job and my spare time were sort of taken care...

We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming – well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.

I take a few quick sips. “This is really good.” And I mean it. I have never tasted tea like this. It is smooth, pungent, and instantly addicting.”This is from Grand Auntie,” my mother explains....

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.

…A painting was a translation of the language of my heart.

And now at the airport, after shaking hands with everybody, waving good-bye, I think about all the different ways we leave people in this world. Cheerily waving good-bye to some at airports, knowing we’ll never...

…A mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place. She teaches you the nature of happiness: what is the right amount, what is too much, and the kind that makes you...

I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn’t understand her English, because she was Chinese.

So much of history is mystery. We don’t know what is lost forever, what will surface again. All objects exist in a moment of time. And that fragment of time is preserved or lost or...

I’d like to be more forgiving. There are times when I’ve had a hard time forgiving people who have betrayed me.

People think it’s a terrible tragedy when somebody has Alzheimer’s. But in my mother’s case, it’s different. My mother has been unhappy all her life. For the first time in her life, she’s happy.

Everyone must dream. We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming – well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate. Isn’t that true?

He simply translated what was in LuLing’s heart: her better intentions, her hopes.

I write because I know that one day I will die, and thus I should experience as many deliberate observations, careful thoughts, wild ideas, and deep emotions as I can before that day occurs.

My favorite anything is always relative to the context of present time, place and mood. When I finish a book and want to immediately find another by the same author and no other, that author...

What do you think was the first sound to become a word, a meaning?…I imagined two people without words, unable to speak to each other. I imagined the need: The color of the sky that...

Now they seemed to be in a contest over who could irritate her more, and she sometimes had to remind herself that teenagers had souls

I didn’t fear failure. I expected failure.

You can’t stay in the dark for too long. Something inside you starts to fade, and you become like a starving person, crazy-hungry for light.

Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.

We are the kind of people who obsess over one word… but we have only one shot to get it right in concert. It was hard the first time I practiced with them. I was...

Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.

It’s a luxury being a writer because all you ever think about is life.

I am an American, steeped in American values. But I know on an emotional level what it means to be of the Chinese culture.

Maybe all Americans who suffer from melancholy act as if they have gone mad. But I truly thought he might throw himself in the river, and I don’t want his ghost visiting to keep telling...

Even when I worked in that world, I still wanted love so strong that the man would have no interest in another woman. Maybe you will always be incapable of giving that kind of love....

Was there ever a great true love? Anyone who became the object of my obsession and not simply my affections?…I could not let myself become that unmindful. Isn’t that what love is – losing your...

I like to go somewhere where I learn something I didn’t know before, like the Dry Tortugas between Florida and Cuba.

But you can’t stay in the dark for so long. Something inside of you starts to fade and you become like a starving person, crazy-hungry for light.