You must not tell anyone,' my mother said, 'what I am about to tell you.'

Adultery is extravagance.

Gods you avoid won't hurt you.

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.

Reading Ngo Tu Lap's poems, terrible nostalgia wells up in me- nostalgia for a lost time and a far-gone country, nostalgia for people I've loved, and for creatures of forests and rivers. I feel gratitude too. War is over. Peace arrives with these beautiful poems.

Humans are basically good. That's why it takes so much training to march march march kill kill kill kill.

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