Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth..

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..

Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this. Everyone else want best quality. You thinking different..

It means we're looking one way, while following another. We're for one side and also the other. We mean what we say, but our intentions are different..

And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind..

My mother imparted her daily truths so she could help my older brothers and me rise above our circumstances. We lived in San Francisco's Chinatown. L….

I am fascinated by language in daily life: the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth..

Whenever my mother talks to me, she begins the conversation as if we were already in the middle of an argument..

The life we receive is not always what we choose..

Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward..

All objects exist in a moment of time..

The muse appears at the point in my writing when I sense a subtle shift, a nudge to move over, and everything cracks open, the writing is freed, the ….

I don't steer clear of genres. I simply haven't steered myself toward some of them..

Hardships can harden even the best person..

You write a book and you hope somebody will go out and pay $24.95 for what you've just said. I think books were my salvation. Books saved me from bei….

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 sor….

That is the saddest part when you lose someone you love - that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost? Maybe you….

Wise guy, he not go against wind. In Chinese we say, Come from South, blow with wind -- poom! -- North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen..

I felt stuck in the bottom of a wishing well. I was desperate to shout what I wanted, but I didn’t know what that was. I knew only what it wasn’t. Th….

External success has to do with people who may see me as a model, or an example, or a representative. As much as I may dislike or want to reject that….

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….