Madeleine Thien

"My mother used to say that my tones are all crooked: it’s like hearing a song sung out of tune."

"It’s one of those places you can never quite see enough of it, it’s vast. For the Chinese it’s very odd for people to travel alone so I often get picked up by families and couples. You learn a lot from what people don’t tell you."

"…Language is fragile. Words can erase and distort so many things. Justice, reason, democracy, freedom, goodness, truth—we have used these words in the service of widely different intentions. We have used them in humane ways and in deeply violent ways…"

"…There are numerous sensitive subjects in China, and writers there have to make decisions about how they’re going to create in these conditions. The resulting literature is fascinating, full of docu-fiction, allegory, and everything in-between…"