I am still learning about love. I thought I understood it--not just mother love, but the love for one's parents, for one's husband, and for one's laotong. I've experienced the other types of love--pity love, respectful love and gratitude love. But looking at our secret fan with its messages written between Snow Flower and me over many years, I see that I didn't value the most important love--deep-heart love.

What stays with me most is a general sense of loss, unease, and longing for the past that cannot be relieved.

I think sometimes as an adult, you take people for what they do, and what they are now, instead of the whole picture of their lives.

I think all women have a friend who at some point dumped them or betrayed them or deeply disappointed them. And at the same time all women have a friend who they dumped or betrayed or hurt in some way. That's universal in women's friendships.

All women on earth-- and men, too for that matter-- hope for the kind of love that transforms us, raises us up out of the everyday, & gives us the courage to survive our little deaths: the heartache of unfulfilled dreams, of career and personal disappointments, of broken love affairs.

When the sun is shining, think of the time it won't be, because even when you're sitting in your house with the doors shut, misfortune can fall from above. Page 279

I didn't know you would be here last night, but you were. We can't fight fate. Instead, we must accept that fate has given us a special opportunity.