Whatever is not commonly seen is condemned as alien.

It was clear that the special interest groups in California really wanted the Chinese to be shut out of the country, because that was where the racial tension was the greatest.

The whole story of the comfort women, the system of forced sexual slavery, the medical experiments of Unit 731, is not something that is in the US psyche. That is changing because many books are coming out.

The worst... was what the Pakistani soldiers did to the Bengali women after their failed rebellion.

There isn't much discussion of ruling class in America even in Boston, probably one of the most class-conscious cities in the country?

Often, what you see in the media is driven by economic forces.

After working as a journalist I went to a writing program at Johns Hopkins. It was interesting because it was neither journalistic nor historical, but it emphasized writing style, and afterwards I was asked to write my first book.

Now, most of the new immigrants coming to this country are from Asia as opposed to Europe.

When the Chinese first came to San Francisco, they were actually welcomed by the mayor and they had special ceremonies for them-again this is when their colony was very small, only a few Chinese.

I don't mind solitude. I love talking to other people, but I do need my space.

Your first duty as a writer is to write to please yourself. And you have no duty towards anyone else.

Racism is always there underneath, but usually it is exploited in these times of economic crisis, and it's hard to find out when one slides into another.

It's much more difficult to work on a broad subject than on a specific one, because even if it's hard to find the information, if you look hard enough for something specific you will find it, and you will discover things that you wouldn't have thought of before.

I received an honorary doctorate for my work. Maybe one of these works is considered the equivalent of a Ph.D.

Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.

It's a wonderful thing to see a segment of our population that is open and eager to learn more about Chinese culture. It has filtered into the mainstream. You see credit-card ads on TV with white couples and Chinese babies.

It is very difficult to hang onto the relics of history.

If the conditions were right there could be great acceptance. Often it is only when they pose an economic or political threat that it turns really ugly.

I have to finish this book tour of almost 30 cities.

Of course, in the United States, which at the time was a very young country, there were also class distinctions. They weren't as pronounced, but they quickly evolved as well.

There is also an epidemic of infertility in this country. There are more women who have put off child-bearing in favor of their professional lives. For them, the only way they are going to have a family is to adopt from China.

We have to keep in mind that it's not just about the numbers of people who died; it's also the manner which many of these victims met their deaths.

Whatever is not commonly seen is condemned as alien.

There isn't much in the way of pure communist spirit, because the whole nation seems to be engaged in capitalistic enterprises. Much of the country still operates under government control.

Somebody who was born in this country who visited China would later face difficulty getting back in to the USA. We have to keep in mind that the struggles of the Chinese against these exclusion laws really laid down the foundations of civil rights law.

I have certainly amassed many historical research gathering skills.

I may attempt a novel. I think that no matter what you write, it requires being honest with oneself, and you have to pull yourself out of the whirlwind of daily life.

When you take something extremely broad, then it is not a work of expansion or work of compression. It's hard because you have to decide what to throw out.

There are now hundreds of thousands of new engineers that are being trained in China. If people start finding themselves losing their jobs, not to the Chinese here but because China has become such a dominant force - then there could very well be a backlash.

They probably do have an Asian Barbie.

For some reason, I seem to be bothered whenever I see acts of injustice and assaults on people's civil liberties. I imagine what I write in the future will follow in that vein. Whether it's fiction or non-fiction.

The spoken word vanished with the wind. Likewise, the unrecorded life disappears as if it never existed.

I have no idea how people think of literary agents. Truthfully, I don't think they think of them very often.

Graduate school is a place to hide for a couple of years.

I want everyone to meet you. You're my favorite person of all time.

This is the place where anybody - like an African American kid raised by a single mom - can be president.

When you don't work for a while, immediately you get a little black mark next to your name.

The defense of marriage is the defense of freedom. Neither of which is obsolete.

I never excluded any genre on my first record.

Hip hop can be a very powerful weapon to help expand young peoples political and social consciousness. But just as with any weapon if you dont know how to use it if you dont know where to point it or what youre using it for you can end up shooting yourself in the foot or killing your sisters and brothers.

At the Cruiserweight Classic finale, I said... I don't know if people had looked it up, or if they had heard it before, but it was an old Zen proverb. 'Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, you chop wood, carry water.' It can be interpreted a lot of ways, but for the most part it's about staying in the moment.

I deeply believe - and not just as a matter of politics, but even as a matter of morality - that matters about reproduction and intimacy and relationships and contraception are in the personal realm. They're moral decisions for individuals to make for themselves. And the last thing we need is government intruding into those personal decisions.

I guess happiness is not a state you want to be in all the time.

If you have issues with family, friends, and people at work, try and solve these issues head on so you can move on and concentrate on having the life you want.

A city built on rivers and bituminous coal, Pittsburgh in the '90s has survived the boom and bust years.

Since governmental quotas expand bureaucratic power, provoke a backlash and are unfair to individuals, we need to find a better way to increase minority opportunities.

To be honest, whenever I go to shoots, or I'm on set, it really makes makeup special and allows me to have so much more fun with it - I don't wear it on an everyday basis, because I like my skin to breathe.

In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, by virtue of his or her occupation, a sage, someone with no institutional affiliations who could offer an authoritative word on our times as well as on our moral life.

The Iron Dome is great for the U.S.