I'd like to go to New Society Village someday and find out exactly how far I can walk before people stop talking like me.

My job is my own only land.

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

Do the right thing by whoever crosses your path. Those coincidental people are your people.

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.

There's something in life that's a curtain, and I keep trying to raise it.

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.