This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely.

For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness-- a world in which fathers didn't sell their daughters.

If a few minutes of suffering could make me so angry, what would years of it do? Even a stone can be worn down with enough rain.

My mother once told me I was like water. Water can carve its way even through stone. And when trapped, water makes a new path.

Never give up; for even rivers someday wash dams away.

Now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.

All at once I felt so vain, like a girl posturing for the crowds as she walks along, only to discover the street is empty.