Shirley MacLaine

"The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends."

"[About George McGovern] He is a spiritually evolved political leader."

"Quite often I feel forced to write against the stereotype. As much as you would like to ignore the stereotype, saying it's totally irrelevant, actually you can't. It impinges on your life a lot, it impacts on your work, and I know that quite often I write against the stereotype and I react against the stereotype. One stereotype of Asian Americans is that we're really serious, and we never have any fun, and we have no sense of humor. When Shirley MacLaine made an early trip to China and then she came back with a documentary, one of the things she said on the documentary was that "they have no sense of humor," and "we told all these jokes and they didn't laugh." I think I might overemphasize showing how Chinese and Chinese Americans are the most raucous people: they laugh so much, they're telling jokes, and they're always standing up and performing for one another. They're so outgoing. And so in China Men and in Tripmaster Monkey I really go overboard to emphasize that part of the character. I also think that being able to laugh and to be funny-those are really important human characteristics, and when we say that people don't have those characteristics, then we deny them their humanity."