Research is always a high priority in my fiction. Songs, fashion, politics, television, movies, trends - I try to get those details right.

American and Vietnamese characters alike leap to life through the voice and eyes of a tenyearold girl-a protagonist so strong, loving, and vivid I longed to hand her a wedge of freshly cut papaya.

I learned to read when I was three, so I skipped right over picture books and didn't learn to appreciate art in books until much later.

Good humor pokes fun at the powerful — not the weak.

We adults all stay sixteen or so in some corner of the soul.

I hope and pray that despite an unhealed past full of atrocities and deep divisions in the present, God can and will make "the distant near" and a "brother of the stranger" in America's future.

There weren't too many books featuring other cultures and countries when I was growing up as an immigrant kid here in the States.

If you have a chance to see Children Of War, you can watch expert trauma counselors try to help bring healing to young people who have experienced atrocities in conflict.

It’s a shame how much artists have to bleed for people to enjoy their work.

The mind is deeper than the horizon, bigger than the universe, and more mysterious than space.

Tick. Tick. Tick. This is the sound of your life running out.

Shawn's (Shawn Weatherly - former beauty queen) acting ability is such that she could not convey the concept of falling if your pushed her off a cliff.

No, Groucho is not my real name. I am breaking it in for a friend.

Basically, though, I believe in eating well, not eating too much but eating a variety of foods.

Red Hook Road made me happy, and happy to be alive. It took me out of my home on the coast of South Carolina, placed me in the town along Red hook Road, and changed me the way good books always do.

A lot of weird ads. Sally Struthers with that little kid: 'Just 55 cents, the price of a cup of coffee, feeds this kid and his family for a week.' Yeah, where is that? 'Cause I wanna move there.

I always travel first class on a train. It's the only way to avoid one's creditors.