“When the dead departed, they took away any falsehoods that they might have allowed us to believe while alive; we who are left behind have to embark on a different life, since the dead are no longer...”

“There is a difference between being remembered and being caught by the mesh of one's mind.”

“I have spent much of my life turning away from the scripts given to me, in China and in America; my refusal to be defined by the will of others is my one and only political statement.”

“A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.”

“The weak-minded choose to hate," she said. "It's the least painful thing to do, isn't it?”

“I am not and autobiographical writer--one can't be without a solid and explicable self--and read all autobiographical writers with the same curiosity. What kind of life permits a person the right t...”

“For every inch of skin, there is memory. Devils are so made. Saints, too, if you believe in them. His humanity has been broken as an old walking stick that once held up a crippled man named Thomas....”

“It frightens me that I can't do anything sensible about it.""Are you scared that you'll wind up with a boring job where you have to see the same people every day and drink instant coffee?""I'm more...”

“She'd be dead before the memories and pain were finally gone; she knew it, accepted it, and dealt with it.”

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”

“There is no future without a past, because what is to be cannot be imagined except as a form of repetition.”

“In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution.”