Anchee Min Quotes

If one wants to get a boat ride, one must be near the river.

lack of will power leads to more failure than lack of intelligence or ability.

We were meant to survive because of our minds' ability to reason, our ability to live with frustration in order to maintain our virtue. We wore smiling masks while dying inside.

My parents lived likeas the neighbours described thema pair of chopsticks, always in harmony.

If you can't go back to your mother's womb, you'd better learn to be a good fighter.

There have been 50 or 60 books written about Empress Orchid, but none of them bothered to really examine the period in China when she lived. I was taught that she was evil; it's in all the textbooks.

I think about giving up. I almost do.

I was happy not to be in his place. He could command my death, but not his. But then, what kind of power was his? He was a prisoner of himself.

The sun doesn't just hang on one family's tree

When Chinese get together - what's buried stays buried. We don't even discuss our embarrassing early days struggling in Chicago.

The self was a very strange concept to me until I came to America, and my child was born with that entitlement, and that just thrilled me.

To be able to do art, it was a luxury to me.

No matter how American I become, I'm considered part of the Chinese community by my own family.