Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.

I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control.

And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.

And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation.

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

Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this. Everyone else want best quality. You thinking different.

I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.