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.

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.

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.

Don't ever feel that you have to hide who you are. Nothing good ever comes from keeping secrets like that.

And one of the interesting things about bound feet is that they never age.

But there are certain books I would never put on a Kindle because you want to be able to look at graphs and photos or the footnotes and maps. You can't see that.

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.