With hope, a mind is always free.

They know where happiness lies, not in a cave or a country, but in love and the freedom to give and take what has been there all along.

I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.

Too many good things all seem the same after a while.

My mother imparted her daily truths so she could help my older brothers and me rise above our circumstances. We lived in San Francisco's Chinatown. Like most of the other Chinese children who played in the back alleys of restaurants and curio shops, I didn't think we were poor. My bowl was always full, three five-course meals every day, beginning with a soup full of mysterious things I didn't want to know the names of.

Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother's English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It's my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world

But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter. -Ying Ying