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.

You may be desperate, but never let anyone see you as anything less than a cultivated woman.

Snow Flower was my old same for life. I had a greater and deeper love for her than I could ever feel for a person who was my husband.

I’ve never thought much about whether I was happy or if I had fun as a child. I was a so-so girl who lived with a so-so family in a so-so village. I didn’t know that there might be another way to live, and I didn’t worry about it either.

Maybe we're all like that with our mothers. They seem ordinary until one day they're extraordinary.

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.

All these types of love come out of duty, respect, and gratitude. Most of them, as the women in my county know, are sources of sadness, rupture, and brutality.