You are free when you gain back yourself,” Madame Wu said. “You can be as free within these walls as you could be in the whole world. And how could you be free if, however far you wander, you still carry inside yourself the constant thought of him? See where you belong in the stream of life. Let it flow through you, cool and strong. Do not dam it with your two hands, lest he break the dam and so escape you. Let him go free, and you will be free.

One faces the future with one's past.

A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.

We must have hope or starve to death.

He saw on the paper a picture of a man, white-skinned, who hung upon a crosspiece of wood. The man was without clothes except for a bit about his loins, and to all appearences he was dead, since his head drooped upon his shoulder and his eyes were closed above his bearded lips. Wang Lung looked at the pictured man in horror and with increasing interest.

The test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members

If you start to revise before you've reached the end, you're likely to begin dawdling with the revisions and putting off the difficult task of writing.