"I totally consider myself an American writer, and that has been my big battle: to get to realize that my roots as a w…"

"I have tried very hard as a novelist to say, "Novels are about individuals and especially larger than life individual…"

"I have been murdered and reborn at least three times; the very correct young woman I was trained to be, and was very …"

"That's the marvelous thing about the writing process: you don't know when and how a memory, a scrap of conversation o…"

"I believe that if you are literate, all literature that you expose yourself to is your heritage to claim"

"Where am I going? I don't want to know too far ahead. (1996)"

"Novelists aim for fullness of catharsis, not a political pamphlet. (1996)"

"An author focuses on a few individual characters, and hopes that a larger frisson of emotion and revelation comes acr…"

"I am always amazed when reviewers or some literary critics lump all Asian American writers together as being a homoge…"

"It meant that anyone with a brown face in cities like Toronto, Vancouver was fair game for physical harassment as wel…"