how can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?

Hope is the adrenalin of the soul.

Don't think too much. That makes you believe you have more choices than you do. Then you mind becomes confused.

I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?

That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.

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.

Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.