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.

At the age of fifteen my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord general.

If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out.

So with my luck, I'll never make it in time to save the boy in the forest because my hair will have snagged on a tree branch a mile back.

Fortunately, both my parents, especially my mom, have guided me, and been amazing at handling my career and my finances. They taught me not to buy what I don't need, when I'm not working that much.

An imbalanced association is when one or both parties become abusive and takes unfair advantage, tries to block another's enlightenment or success.

Don't give in to all the cliques and popularity. It means nothing. I know super popular guys, and guess what? They're just normal people, too.

Many people forget that Jazz, no matter what form it takes, must come from the heart as well as the mind.

When you're young, there's a whole lot of stuff you say you'll never do. Once you get a little older, the list tends to get shorter.

I really wanted to do things that weren't comic. It felt like finding people who can see this other side to me.

There are wars and poverty and so on - it's based on fear. You can cure that with your being by not being afraid.

In my opinion, the style of a player should not be formed under the influence of any single great master.