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.

In that moment I understood that the cruelest words in the universe are if only.

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.

People say you need to be strong, smart, and lucky to survive hard times, war, a natural disaster, or physical torture. But I say emotional abuse—anxiety, fear, guilt, and degradation—is far worse and much harder to survive.

There is no life without death. That is the true meaning of yin and yang

Gone were my girlish ideas about romantic love and my later ideas about sexual love. From Yi, I learned to appreciate deep-heart love. Peony in Love

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.