“You, the foreign media, have been the companion of my people in its long and painful journey to freedom.”

“I've reached a point in life where it's no longer necessary to try to impress. If they like me the way I am, that's good. If they don't, that's too bad.”

“Give until it hurts.”

“I would rather die a meaningful death than to live a meaningless life.”

“She comes with horns not the moonAnd tail not the comet”

“Foreignness is intrinsically stimulating. Like a good game of bridge, the condition of being foreign engages the mind constantly without ever tiring it.”……“But we cannot expect to have it all ways. Life is full of choices, and to choose one thing is to forgo another. The dilemma of foreignness comes down to one of liberty versus fraternity—the pleasures of freedom versus the pleasures of belonging. The homebody chooses the pleasures of belonging. The foreigner chooses the pleasures of freedom, and the pains that go with them.”

“Because of sorrow, my awareness of life's pulse is strongly detectable. It is syncopation while I journey, a lap of ocean in the eyes of every person I meet. This awareness informs the flesh of my stories. Grief has been an odd companion, at first a terror, but now I am all the better having accepted it for its intrinsic worth.”