“i would rather be married to broken jade than flawless clay”

“I wonder if there was anything I could have done differently. I hope I would have done everything differently, except I know that everything would have turned out the same. That's the meaning of fate. But if some things are fated and some people are luckier than others, then I also have to believe that I still haven't found my destiny.”

“I focus my eyes on my jade bracelet. All these years and for all the years after I die, it will remain unchanged. It will always be hard and cold- just a piece of stone. Yet for me it is an object that ties me to the past, to people and places that are gone forever. Its continued perfection serves as a physical reminder to keep living, to look to the future, to cherish what I have. It reminds me to endure. I'll live one morning after another.”

“Parents die, daughters grow up and marry out, but sisters are for life.”

“I wonder if there was anything I would have done differently. I hope I would have done everything differently, except I know everything would have turned out the same. That's the meaning of fate.”

“Snow Flower was my old same for life. I had a greater and deeper love for her than I could ever feel for a person who was my husband.”

“All women on earth-- and men, too for that matter-- hope for the kind of love that transforms us, raises us up out of the everyday, & gives us the courage to survive our little deaths: the heartache of unfulfilled dreams, of career and personal disappointments, of broken love affairs.”