Writing is the witness to myself about myself. Whatever others say of me or how they interpret me is a simulacrum of their own devising. - Amy Tan

Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else's joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.

People look at me as this very, I don't know, Confucius-like wise person — which I'm not. They don't see all the shit that I've been through.

No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.