I saw what I had been fighting for: it was for me, a scared child.

I think Kwan intended to show me the world is not a place but the vastness of the sou. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true....If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find them anytime with our hundred secret senses.

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

What is a secret wish?" "It is what you want but cannot ask.

I won't be what I'm not. -Jing-mei

The life we receive is not always what we choose.

Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.