If one wants to get a boat ride, one must be near the river.

lack of will power leads to more failure than lack of intelligence or ability.

We were meant to survive because of our minds' ability to reason, our ability to live with frustration in order to maintain our virtue. We wore smiling masks while dying inside.

My parents lived likeas the neighbours described thema pair of chopsticks, always in harmony.

If you can't go back to your mother's womb, you'd better learn to be a good fighter.

There have been 50 or 60 books written about Empress Orchid, but none of them bothered to really examine the period in China when she lived. I was taught that she was evil; it's in all the textbooks.

I think about giving up. I almost do.

I was happy not to be in his place. He could command my death, but not his. But then, what kind of power was his? He was a prisoner of himself.

The sun doesn't just hang on one family's tree

When Chinese get together - what's buried stays buried. We don't even discuss our embarrassing early days struggling in Chicago.

The self was a very strange concept to me until I came to America, and my child was born with that entitlement, and that just thrilled me.

I can no longer trust in this loveIt has fallen like the saints aboveAll because of your sweet liesYou sang them like a lullaby"Phoenix

Always keep fighting

I think to be in a monastery or an ashram is not always the answer because we don't fight, we kick back. We don't listen to Sri Krishna.

I like to set up obstacles and defeat them.

We need to figure how to defend higher education as a public good. If we can't do that, we're in trouble.

Of all the subjects on this planet, I think my parents would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

A sad smile crossed her face, and I knew right then what she was trying to tell me. Her eyes never left mine as she finally said the words that numbed my soul. I'm dying, Landon.

Look, Rose. You don't have to keep up with the hard-to-get thing. You already got me.

Keep a stiff upper chin.

He was currently wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon were.