What the best novels and novelists do is to offer a different way of seeing.

If you want to know a country, read its writers.

All liars ... lie to protect themselves, to shield their egos from the raw pain of truth.

War had the effect of encouraging people to try to stay alive. Poverty, too. Survival was simply too hard-won to be given up lightly.

What ultimately happened is that my country had a war. I think it would be extraordinary, as a writer, not to want to write about that.

I was brought up in a household where you stood up to be counted.

Jung Chang was the first person to tell a grand historical, political story through a personal narrative.

A dread filled me, a dread unlike any I had ever felt. Not the terror of God, or his angels, but the sickly fear of man.

I learned about women -- how we are made into the women we've become, how we shape ourselves, how we shape each other.

Yet what use against the deceit of a state are the memories of a child?

A life, a history, whole patterns of existence altered, simply by doing nothing. The silent lie. The act of omission.

Greatness in the last analysis is largely bravery-courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards.

I think it's very hard for a woman to be treated as a person and not just as a woman who tries to become a politician.

We are but dust and shadows.

Things always look different from higher up.

The silent treasuring up of knowledge; learning without satiety; and instructing others without being wearied: which one of these things belongs to me?

Near counts more than far, familiar more than different. Such is the indictment against the press, that it fails to treat similar tragedies with equal dignity.

I know how ridiculous this sounds because of the job I do but I don't believe in romanticism and make-believe.

The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things...Things must happen when it is time for them to happen.

Engineering is the art or science of making practical.

Misfortunes, in fine, cannot be avoided; but they may be sweetened, if not overcome, and our lives made happy by philosophy.