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

We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. -Suyuan

Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it - that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.

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

You can have pride in what you do each day, but not arrogance in what you were born with.

Seeing her this last time, I threw myself on her body. And she opened her eyes slowly. I was not scared. I knew she could see me and what she had finally done. So i shut her eyes with my fingers and told her with my heart: I cah see the truth, too. I am strong, too.

My mother didn't teach me lessons about being Chinese as strongly as she did the notion of who I was as a female.