People come in and out of our lives, and the true test of friendship is whether you can pick back up right where you left off the last time you saw each other.

When the sun is shining, think of the time it won't be, because even when you're sitting in your house with the doors shut, misfortune can fall from above. Page 279

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

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

Perhaps he was afraid as I was that we'd be caught. Or perhaps he was breathing me in just as I was letting him come into my lungs, my eyes, my heart.

For my entire life I longed for love. I knew it was not right for me — as a girl and later as a woman — to want or expect it, but I did, and this unjustified desire has been at the root of every problem I have experienced in my life.

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.