“Old Time, in whose banks we deposit our notesIs a miser who always wants guineas for groats;He keeps all his customers still in arrearsBy lending them minutes and charging them years.”

“I think we'll always miss our parents. But I think we can miss them without being miserable all the time. After all, they wouldn't want us to be miserable.”

“Mother--that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries.”

“Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.”

“I often think of life as a deposit of time. We are each allocated so many years, just like a fixed sum in a bank. When twenty-four hours have passed I have spent one more day. I read in the People's Daily that the average life expectancy for a Chinese woman is seventy-two. I am already seventy-four years old. I spent all my deposits two years ago and am on bonus time. Every day is already a gift. What is there to complain of?”

“Back before the internet we had a name for people who bought a single copy of our books and lent them to all their friends without charging: we called them "librarians".”