Why do you ask me questions to which you already know the answer?"
She tapped me on the arm with her painted fan. "To annoy you, dearest.

I shall bury the blade in your skull, just above your right eye."
"That's what I love about you. Your precision.

from The Ninja and The Diplomat (coming in September 2015)--As an unintended but ineluctable consequence of the one child policy, he and his wife, like most of his generation and those succeeding, consisted of only children; hence his family included no aunts or uncles, no cousins, and no nieces or nephews. The Chinese family had lost an immeasurable dimension of richness.

She thought about her cousins in Oklahoma, which was odd, since she'd never spent much time with them. She didn't even know them very well. Now she was sorry about that.

Annoyance and pathos warred in my breast, and after a short struggle, annoyance punched pathos in the snout like the voracious shark it was.

J'apprécie que les cousins se comportent en cousins & se préoccupent les uns des autres. Car, en réalité, ce sont seulement des frères & sœurs un peu plus éloignés.