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.