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

You see what power is holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them.

Now they seemed to be in a contest over who could irritate her more, and she sometimes had to remind herself that teenagers had souls

Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.

That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.

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.

If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever. -An-mei