Ying-ying, you have tiger eyes. They gather fire in the day. At night they shine golden.

Hope is the adrenalin of the soul.

Words to me were magic. You could say a word and it could conjure up all kinds of images or feelings or a chilly sensation or whatever. It was amazing to me that words had this power.

To come so far, to lose so much and to find nothing. -Jing-mei

Hardships can harden even the best person.

People there only dream that it is China, because if you are Chinese you can never let go of China in your mind.

And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind.