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.

Anyone who says that women do not have influence in men's decisions makes a vast and stupid mistake.

In every message she spoke of birds, of flight, of the world away. Even back then, she flew against what was presented to her. I wanted to cling to her wings and soar, no matter how intimidated I was.

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.

How can we not create a fantasy in our minds when the reality is so hard?

I am old enough to know only too well my good and bad qualities, which were often one in the same.

It used to happen in villages and towns in China that they would have - I guess you'd call them beauty contests - where all of the women of a particular village or town would be seated behind these screens or curtains with only their feet showing.