It is a Chinese tradition that everyone has to be in everyone else's life.

Every place is a good place, only time goes wrong.

Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.

To write about a struggle amidst the struggling: one must hope that the muddling will end someday.

What a long way it is from one life to another: yet why write if not for that distance; if things can be let go, every before replaced by an after.

A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.

She wonders if this is what people call falling in love, the desire to be with someone for every minute of the rest of her life so strong that sometimes she is frightened of herself.

Only the smaller fish pay for the goverment's face-lift. The big ones - they just become bigger and fatter.

What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?

I would never describe a cloud as 'fluffy'—in Chinese or in English.

The decaying that had dragged on for too long had only turned tragedy into nuisance; death, when it strikes, better completes its annihilating act on the first try.

There is no quick fix-all procedure to heal your insecurities. Like any relationship, the relationship with yourself must be built and re-built one kind, loving conversation at a time.

People who concentrate on giving good service always get more personal satisfaction as well as better business. How can we get better service? One way is by trying to see ourselves as others do.

I'm not an expert on the arms race.

The shadow past is shaped by everything that never happened. Invisible, it melts the present like rain through karst.

The security light made me feel safe, though I knew that was an illusion. If there's light, you can just see what's coming for you a little more clearly.

I write one poem a year, usually in January or February.

One does not succeed by sticking to convention. When your opponent can easily anticipate every move you make, your strategy deteriorates and becomes commoditized.

I would like to maximize the level of human choice in the medical field...The choice of a treatment in many ways is like the exercise of religion.

There'll come a moment when you think you can make it, and you'll try.

If I do the same act that I did in 1995, in essence you're saying (in a robotic voice), 'My mind has never changed'