She [my mother] said that if I listened to her, later I would know what she knew: where true words came from, always from up high, above everything else. And if I didn't listen to her, she said my ear would bend too easily to other people, all saying words that had no lasting meaning, because they came from the bottom of their hearts, where their own desires lived, a place where I could not belong.

Libraries are the pride of the city.

Only two kinds of daughters, she shouted in Chinese. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!

I began to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid.

After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?

No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.

All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. -Ying Ying