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.

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

Seeing something once is better than hearing about it a hundred times. Doing something once is better than seeing it a hundred times.

People write to me all the time, and I write back.

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.

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

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.