To shut the door at the end of the workday, which does not spill over into evening. To throw away books after reading them so theydon't have to be dusted. To go through boxes on New Year's Eve and throw out half of what is inside. Sometimes for extravagance to pick a bunch of flowers for the one table. Other women besides me must have this daydream about a carefree life.

In a time of destruction, create something: a poem, a parade, a community, a school, a vow, a moral principle; one peaceful moment.

Before we can leave our parents, they stuff our heads like the suitcases which they jam-pack with homemade underwear.

You're too young to decide to live forever.

Not many women got to live out the daydream of women—to have a room, even a section of a room, that only gets messed up when she messes it up herself.

Long ago in China, knot-makers tied string into buttons and frogs, and rope into bell pulls. There was one knot so complicated that it blinded the knot-maker. Finally an emperor outlawed this cruel knot, and the nobles could not order it anymore. If I had lived in China, I would have been an outlaw knot-maker.

My job is my own only land.