I like to go somewhere where I learn something I didn't know before, like the Dry Tortugas between Florida and Cuba.

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.

I have loved works of fiction precisely for their illusions, for the author's sleight-of-hand in showing me the magic, what appeared in the right hand but not in the left.

Then she told me why a tiger is gold and black. It has two ways. The gold side leaps with its fierce heart. The black side stands still with cunning, hiding its gold between the trees, seeing and not being seen, waiting patiently for things to come. I did not learn to use my black side until after the bad man left me.

We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.

But later that day, the streets of Kweilin were strewn with newspapers reporting great Kuomintang victories, and on top of these papers, like fresh fish from a butcher, lay rows of people - men, women and children who had never lost hope, but had lost their lives instead.

Hope is the adrenalin of the soul.