“Published in this month's Harper's, from a conversation held in Beijing in February 1973:Chairman Mao Zedong: Do you want our Chinese women? We can give you ten million.U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger: The chairman is improving his offer.Mao: We can let them flood your country with disaster and therefore impair your interests. In our country we have too many women, and they have a way of doing things. They give birth to children, and our children are too many.”

“Today women live long into their children's adult lives . . . too little is made of the pleasure we women feel in conversing with our grown children, and in allowing ourselves, from time to time, to think of them as friends. I have been fortunate in having children with whom conversation is possible; the sheerest pleasure here, for me, has been in meeting with them each alone . . . [p. 185]”

“All of us - we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations.”

“We women make choices for others, not for ourselves, and when we are mothers, we...bear what we must for our children. You will protect them. It will hurt you; it will hurt them. Your job is to hide that your heart is breaking and do what they need you to do.”

“Sometimes in our attempt to give children what we did not have, we forget to give our children what we did have.”

“I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.”