I always wanted to be a writer.

If you have love, even plain cold water is sweet.

While I was writing Wild Swans I thought the famine was the result of economic mismanagement but during the research I realised that it was something more sinister.

I think because of their terrible past, particularly this century, the Chinese have come to accept cruelty more than many other people, which is something I feel very unhappy about

I remember when my mother pointed to a stone, and she said this was the kind of stone people used to place on the feet of the baby girls to stop them trying to climb away and unbind their feet.

China is more prosperous than before. The people have better lives but they are not happy and confident because the scars are still there.

What has marked Chinese society is its level of cruelty, not just revolutions and wars. We ought to reject it totally, otherwise in another upheaval there will be further cruelty.

When I was in China, Mao was Chairman, and parents were terrified to tell their children anything that differed from the party line in case the children repeated it and endangered the whole family.

When he asked my grandmother if she would mind being poor, she said she would be happy just to have her daughter and himself: 'If you have love, even plain water is sweet.

Although my book is banned I am still allowed to go to China and travel. There is no longer the kind of control that Mao used to have-there have been deep fundamental changes in society.

I would love mainland Chinese to read my book. There is a Chinese translation which I worked on myself, published in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Many copies have gone into China but it is still banned.

His voice was cloves and nightingales, it took us to spice markets in the Celebs, we drifted with him on a houseboat beyond the Coral Sea. We were like cobras following a reed flute.

Rey is so strong. She's cool and smart and she can look after herself. Young girls can look at her and know that they can wear trousers if they want to. That they don't have to show off their bodies.

My grandmother was overwhelmed by what was happening to us. She ahd moved back into the past because the here and the now was too terrible.

The correct unit of study is not the play; it is the scene.

To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful.

My work has been in the field of engaged Buddhism. That is my own practice, which began in 1965 that formed the base for the work I was doing in the civil rights and anti-war movement.

[Death:] The one inexorable thing!

It's not victory if it doesn't end the war.

Sexy ain't guys like Churchill and Lincoln.

Don't wait for it to happen, don't even want it to happen - just watch what does happen.