Leaning with his back against the door, he could hear this voice, then that one. All was silent but for one voice at a time telling a life. (p214) - Maxine Hong Kingston

I feel that everyone has a blurred area, which is a border between their imagination and what actually happens, and I am very interested in that border.

When we Chinese girls listened to the adults talk-story, we learned that we failed if we grew up to be but wives or slaves. We could be heroines, swordswomen. Even if she had to rage across all China, a swordswoman got even with anybody who hurt her family. Perhaps women were once so dangerous that they had to have their feet bound. (p19)

I want to write about something you can't find in research. Research can only, oh, I guess, confirm some of the small details, like what kinds of clothes these people wore and you can see the big historical things that happened. But what I want to say, I can't find through research. There's a feeling that I have, or there are feelings, the way people are in certain circumstances. I feel that it comes from the heightened moments in all our lives when we are really aware of what it feels like to be a person or what life is all about. You don't feel it too often, but every once in awhile you feel it. I want to put that feeling into writing or I want to write words so that when somebody reads it, they can have that feeling. And all the details are only components to get to this feeling. It's sort of a heightened awareness so that you know what it means to be human.