Girls have to be toughened so they can survive a world that presses harder on women.

The heart itself is beyond control. That is its power, and its weakness.

Words are tricky. Sometimes you need them to bring out the hurt festering inside. If you don't, it turns gangrenous and kills you. . . . But sometimes words can break a feeling into pieces.

Above us our palace waits, the only one I've ever needed. Its walls are space, its floor is sky, its center everywhere. We rise; the shapes cluster around us in welcome, dissolving and forming again like fireflies in a summer evening.

they say in the old tales that when a man and woman exchange looks the way we did, their spirits mingle. their gaze is a rope of gold binding each other. even if they never meet again, they carry a little of the other with them always. they can never forget, and they can never be wholly happy again

I saw something I hadn't realized before: words wasted energy. I would use my strength instead to nurture my belief that my life would unfurl uniquely.

Buddha's Wife tells a fascinating story, little known in the west, about the woman whom Buddha left behind. Gabriel Constans focuses the reader's attention on the strong and complicated women who surrounded Buddha and makes us re-think the nature of spiritual life.