No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I didn't have discouragement, because I don't think anybody knew what that meant.

...we were like two people standing apart on separate mountain peaks, recklessly leaning forward to throw stones at one another, unaware of the dangerous chasm that separated us.

Love is tricky. It is never mundane or daily. You can never get used to it. You have to walk with it, then let it walk with you. You can never balk. It moves you like the tide. It takes you out to sea, then lays you on the beach again. Today's struggling pain is the foundation for a certain stride through the heavens. You can run from it but you can never say no. It includes everyone.

And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every direction.

For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.

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

My mother said I was a clingy kid until I was about four. I also remember that from the age of eight she and I fought almost every day.