Now I was a tiger that neither pounced nor lay waiting between the trees. I became an unseen spirit.

It was a distorted form of inverse logic: If hopes never come true, then hope for what you don't want.

I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, to eat my own bitterness. And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.

Hope is the adrenalin of the soul.

You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.

I felt stuck in the bottom of a wishing well. I was desperate to shout what I wanted, but I didn’t know what that was. I knew only what it wasn’t. The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan

Don't think too much. That makes you believe you have more choices than you do. Then you mind becomes confused.