First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"Every time she kissed him, every time he opened his arms and she crawled into them, felt like a miracle. Coming to her made him feel perfectly welcomed, perfectly at home, as he had never in his life felt before. (p40)"
"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. 1977, May 3, six thirty in the morning, no one knows anything but this innocuous fact: Lydia is late for breakfast. (first lines)"
"As a former debater, I think that the âdebateâ mentality is a huge part of the problems in our public discourse. Debateâwhich many aspiring lawyers do in schoolâteaches you to treat everything like an academic thought experiment, rather than real issues that affect actual humans."
"Here is a prayer: As you gain power, may you never forget what itâs like to not have power."
"one way to think of privilege is whoâs allowed to make mistakes."
"Fiction says, I believe that this could happen. It is prospective, focused on possibilities. It opens us to the possible, the hypothetical, rather than binding us to the actual. And this, more than anything, is why true stories alone arenât enough, why we should recognize fiction and read it, why fiction is valuable. Without fiction, we might end up like the woman on the bus, unable to muster interest in anything that isnât a True Story, that doesnât come with shocking photographs. We would have no what ifs, only what dids. We would have nothing but the actual. And if we believe only in the actual, how small our lives would be, how limited and mean our humanity, to demand proof before we believe or conceive of suffering, loss, or strangeness."
"Unlike the memoirist, who promises to tell the truth, the fiction writer says upfront, âI am going to tell you a lie, but at the end you will feel that it is true.â He or she is a kind of magician who makes sure you know that the flames are only an illusion before letting you burn your fingers in them. Every event, every character, must be made real by the authorâs skill. It is a tricky balancing act, because the fiction writer aims for simultaneous belief and disbelief: a belief in the essential trueness of this worldâthat these people could exist, that these events could have happenedâwith a full consciousness of their falsehoodâŚfictionâs role is essentially persuasive. It forces you to start from a position of disbelief by announcing its own fictitiousness. Then it transforms you into the literary equivalent of a sinner seeing the light, a prodigal son whose faith is stronger for having doubted and been redeemed. You donât question a memoir; you believe itâs true when you pick it up. But you are told from the beginning that fiction is untrue. It depends on its own power to convince you in spite of this knowledge, and that belief, when it comes, is a complete transformation. And this is why we need fiction."
"I cultivate my Chinese garden in the middle of an American townâŚI love China with all my heart and soul, although I feel fortunate to have escaped it."
"I had no expectations. I thought, âIf I donât make it, itâs my own fault.â In China I had to suffer and labour for the Communist Party â here I was given the opportunity to suffer and labour for myself and to build my own life. I chose to look at the glass half full â I think thatâs a very immigrant attitude."
"I didn't have to do the research I did for my historical novels, especially Empress Orchid, on which I labored to line up every account/record â investigative journalism, so to speak. The challenge about writing The Cooked Seed as a memoir was the issue of honesty, as how far and how deep was I willing to go to expose, examine, and dissect my life â that included doing autopsies on my flaws and personal failures."
"In all of my historical novels (from Becoming Madame Mao to Empress Orchid and The Last Empress to Pearl of China) I have tried to be as accurate as possible because accuracy gives my historical themes weight. But some have been more literally true than others. The advantage of being a novelist is having the freedom to go directly after the truth of the human heartâŚ"
"âŚWe Chicana/o authors are naturally drawn to concentrate on the challenges and issues that confront our society, which in turn are different from those that our Latin American colleagues face. I really think that we, on this side of the border, tend to be more direct and frank; perhaps some of us might be considered more audacious and blunt. And I believe this comes to us as a result of being brought up in the U.S., where weâre taught to be outspoken. Where a Latin American author circumvents or evades, a Chicana/o aims straight at the heart of the issue without mincing words."
"⌠Itâs difficult not to fall into the stereotype trap here because our culture almost encourages it. Itâs undeniable that among us live the Dominant Machos and the Submissive Females. However, Iâve tried to conquer that reality by working with it, yet not dehumanizing those characters, thus keeping them from being stereotypes."
"Iâve written and published nine novels, and each time Iâve found it difficult not to bring forth the issues that most concern me, whether it be class struggles, womenâs issues, cultural and trans-border experiences. And sincerely, I feel comfortable delving into these issues over and over again because I see their relevance to our society todayâŚ"
"⌠I inhabit the body of a woman, my soul is the soul of a woman, and my eyes are the eyes of a woman, so what else can come out? Of course the women are going to loom to the foreground and the males will go to the background that is not male bashing. It is not because I feel an imperative, a mission; itâs because of who I am and what I am."
"Iâve never felt compelled to write about this or that, or to take a position whether itâs political or ideological. However, I know that because of who I am, what I am, this will come out. I am a woman, so therefore my writing will be about strong women. Because I am the person I am, the women will be very much along my lines and think the way I think, so to speak. Itâs hard for me to write about marginal women. I donât even know what that feels like. Therefore, I will be criticized that my male characters sufferâŚ"
"This is another thing about being honest with oneâs writing. You know that the big umbrella term is Latino/Latina. Twenty years ago, we defined ourselves categorically with the word Chicana. This has been amplified and thatâs okay as long as theyâre talking about the same experiences, but that is not the case. We are all migrants, thereâs not one of us that did not come from an immigrant family. There are different stages; however, some are still coming in from El Salvador and Mexico, some like my family on both sides came in the early part of last century. Some come directly as rural people and others as city people, one is not better than the otherâŚ"
"I am, I get very happy. I go into a phase of satisfaction or joy or happiness when Iâm writing. Itâs painful, but I like the serenity that I get when I write. I canât be doing it always, thatâs why there are gaps. When I finish with the first draft, there is a time I donât do any writing at all. But once I get into that phase, itâs a very rich, a very fulfilling phase of my life. So I look forward to it when it comes upon me again. I am very grateful. I write because it is an experience of joy and fulfillment."
"Whenever Iâm to translate from Spanish to English, I always stop to think of the what but, just as importantly, of the how Iâm going to translate what is said by the characters or what is in the narration. If I used an adage, an axiom, a proverb, a maxim, etc., there are always equivalents but as said previously, one mustnât translate literally, word for word, because that doesnât work. One has to analyze what is in the original to make the point with an equivalent adage or axiom; if thereâs none, there must be something close to the original, and Iâll go with that. What one looks for is meaningâŚ."
"⌠People say to do research; my research is reading and talking and listening to people. I've always found that to be very instructive for me. If it convinces the readerâand you were just very kind with all the things you just said; goodness, it was so affirmative! But that's what I want to do, convince the reader that the writer knows what he is talking about or presenting or showing, whether it's food or dress or motive, expression, just make it as realistic as possible. Not real but realistic."
"âŚBorders, as everyone should know, are not geographical locations alone, they are made by humans, and some suffer while others live off their fellow men and women. The way some characters speak and explain themselves also reveals what social borders the characters have forged for themselves or how they have suffered because of borders, be they linguistic, cultural, social, racial, etc."
"I write, in the main, about the U.S. side of the Rio Grande. That I include the Mexican side is natural and inevitable; that I donât overload it, however, is because I want to present an American literature that was (historically) founded by the neighboring country as seen by its linguistic contribution. To have ignored Mexico would have been a blunder and to have larded it heavier, my work would not have been an American literature, it would have been something else; as to what, I donât know, but Mexico, in some parts and in some ways, had to be includedâŚ"
"Iâm typically not into thrillers, but her books are so pleasurable to read. I can stay up all night reading them because I simply canât live without knowing what happens next. Her women characters are so flawed and broken and interesting. Those are my favorite kind of characters for reasons that are probably very obvious."
"âMy gosh, Nick, why are you so wonderful to me? He was supposed to say: You deserve it. I love you. But he said, âBecause I feel sorry for you.â âWhy?â âBecause every morning you have to wake up and be you.â"
"She already has the righteous, eye-rolling cadence of a conspiracy crackpot. She might as well wrap her head in foil."
"You canât be as in love as we were and not have it invade your bone marrow. Our kind of love can go into remission, but itâs always waiting to return. Like the worldâs sweetest cancer."
"The media has saturated the legal environment. With the Internet, Facebook, YouTube, thereâs no such thing as an unbiased jury anymore. No clean slate. Eighty, ninety percent of the case is decided before you get in the court room. So why not use itâcontrol the story."
"There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesnât ever complain. (How do you know youâre not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: âI like strong women.â If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because âI like strong womenâ is code for âI hate strong women.â)"
"Iâm so much happier now that Iâm dead."
"I can see people milling about under the fluorescent lights. Itâs the kind of place where people mill about."
"We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I canât recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didnât immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial."
"âŚsoldiers on the battlefield of consumerism, armed with vinyl-covered checkbooks and quilted handbags."
"Sleep is like a cat: it only comes to you if you ignore it."
"I am fat with love! Husky with ardor! Morbidly obese with devotion! A happy, busy bumblebee of marital enthusiasm. I positively hum around him, fussing and fixing. I have become a strange thing. I have become a wife. I find myself steering the ship of conversationsâbulkily, unnaturallyâjust so I can say his name aloud. I have become a wife, I have become a bore, I have been asked to forfeit my Independent Young Feminist card. I donât care."
"If you are someone who reads books to feel like you have a friend on the page, my book is not going to be the book for youâŚI write for people who are readers the way I'm a reader. I don't care if I dislike a character; I care if I find them interesting or they make me laugh, or if I'm trying to figure them out. I am always more interested in that."
"I loved being scared as a kid. I loved the darker side of humanity. That was in my brain, even from a very early age. I was always thinking, âWhat could be the scariest outcome of this situation?â My cousins and I were kind of raised in a pack togetherâall girls. They always wanted to be princesses. I always wanted to be a witch. Or a killer. My head just went in that direction. Maybe because my father was a film professor, I developed a taste for Alfred Hitchcock. Films like Psycho scared me just the right amount. They didnât haunt my dreams in a terrible way. I like that sensation of being scared. Iâve always been one of those people who wants to know whatâs underneath the rock, whatâs down the corner, whatâs down the blind alley."
"Itâs incredibly misogynist to tell me I can only write a certain type of woman. Because thatâs saying women must be a certain type of person. That puts us back to the Stone Ageâlike women are saints and therefore not human and if we stray beyond that model, weâll be severely punished. It denies us any humanity. It doesnât even bother me. It just bounces off me. Itâs such a ridiculous notion that my novels are misogynist because I donât write the kind of women you want."
"I think thereâs a deep societal fear of female rage, partly because it hasnât been experienced a lot. MenâI speak in vast generalitiesâare often very afraid of what they donât know how to handle. And they havenât had to handle female rage a lot, and they think they need to handle it."
"âŚI also wanted to make sure no one tried to make her âsave the cat.â To me, Camille is an inherently kind person despite everything thatâs happened to her. And you see that when you walk through the day with Camille. You see how she treats people. But sheâs not running around saving babies and kittens just so the audience can be sure sheâs a good person."
"I wanted to make it clear that the showâs about a matriarchy. I wanted it to be clear that power can be ugly, and a matriarchy is just as ugly as a patriarchy. It may look a little different, but power is bloody."
"Food is an important symbol. Itâs particularly important for immigrants as the one thing they hope to be able to carry forward thatâs relatively easy to recreate, although it was much harder in the early days when there werenât many Indian groceries. Immigrants learned to make substitutions, like using Bisquick for gulab jamuns, tricks like that. Iâm interested in food in my personal life, too. But food exists on many levels in my books. It reflects changes in our culture as we take shortcuts in how we cook our food, how it remains a comfort regardless."
"It has definitely influenced my writing. I put appropriate Bengali words in among the English ones because I want that weaving of languages. Concepts from Bengali are sometimes difficult to translate but I want them to have a role. Itâs complicated. How do you bring them in without putting little explanatory notes? How do you write so you are at once inviting everyone into your book but also creating a special texture that people of your language background would especially appreciate?"
"When I wrote Arranged Marriage, many of the women in that book were isolated...That isnât so for women coming here now. They have access to generations of wisdom, from recipes to how to bring up children to husband problems. There are also fewer chances of abuse, because domestic abuse flourishes in isolation. We are seeing less abuse, at least in the newer generation. There is more accountability."
"âŚsome characters would be more androgynous by nature and maybe by nurture. But as Iâve continued to write, Iâve made it a point, for my own growth, to write from the point of view of both men and women. Iâm also interested in how some women can be unsympathetic to womenâs issues, especially as they grow older and attain positions of power over other women. That relationship between women, and the power struggle that ensues, is interesting. I want to explore the fact that things are not as simple as saying, okay, men are the bad guys, theyâre the only villainsâŚ"
"I spent childhood vacations with my grandfather in a little village three hours outside of Kolkata. At night, he would bring me and my cousins together, light a kerosene lamp, because there was no electricity, and tell us wonderful stories from folktales, fairy tales, and epics. Sometimes heâd tell family stories, or make up ghost stories. I enjoyed it at the time but didnât realize what an effect it would have on me. It made me understand the power of storytelling, and how, through stories, so much is communicated and passed on from generation to generation."
"I did not think I had a story to tellâŚMoving to a very different culture and learning to live on my own made me see the world much more clearlyâŚ. I thought about India more than I had ever before. I realized what I appreciated about it; the warmth, the closeness of extended family, the way spirituality pervades the culture. But I also recognized problems [with regard to] how women are often treated."
"This novel was born out of a combination of visits I paid to Kolkata and my own musings on family secrets (yes, my family has some!). It struck me that that's an element that transcends culture and country -- the family secret, things we consider shameful or dangerous and keep hidden from outsiders. And what a burden this can become. I was also musing on how the inability to live in amity with difference can cause so much strife and grief, both in the larger political arena and in the home. All these came together in Oleander Girl."
"When I began to write poetry, I knew I had found something so akin to music. Music and poetry are the oldest of human expressions-probably first music, then poetry. They complement each other and blend with each other to form a song. A song is powerful. It has the range of emotion music provides, and the power of ideas, images, memory associations, and speech governed by human intellect. Richard Wagner said something I found extraordinary. He said that the "reason for being of music is poetry." I wholeheartedly subscribe to that notion. At times, somewhere in my mind I hear the music of a poem long before the words come together."
"âŚMy house is my laboratory, set apart from the rest of the world, and when my son was small I spent most of my time there. I often wrote poems while doing housework. I always had pencils and paper throughout the house: in the laundry, in the dining room, in the kitchenâŚ"
"âŚI engage with poetry musically. I think I hear the music of the poem before I put words to it. The poem comes to me as it were a song more than a string of words or images. If I canât transport that musical quality to the poem, then the poem doesnât exist for meâŚâ"