Having a baby is painful in order to show how serious a thing life is.

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.

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.

And often it would be a woman who was in her 70s or 80s who would win the beauty contest, because bound feet never age.

The classics tell us that, in relationships, the one between teacher and student comes second only to the one between parent and child.

Obey, obey, obey, then do what you want.

Mama used to tell us a story about a cicada sitting high in a tree. It chirps and drinks in dew, oblivious to the praying mantis behind it. The mantis arches up its front leg to stab the cicada, but it doesn't know an oriole perches behind it. The bird stretches out its neck to snap up the mantis for a midday meal, but its unaware of the boy who's come into the garden with a net. Three creatures—the cicada, the mantis and the oriole—all coveted gains without being aware of the greater and inescapable danger that was coming.