“Two months in Shanghai, and what does she have to show for herself? She had been full of plans on the plane ride over, had studied her phrase book as if cramming for an exam, had been determined to refine her computational model with a new set of data, expecting insights and breakthroughs, plotting notes for a new article. Only the time has trickled away so quickly. She has meandered through the days chatting with James instead of gathering data. At night, she has gone out to dinners and bars. [James'] Chinese has not improved; her computational model has barely been touched. She does not know what she has been doing with herself, and now an airplane six days away is waiting for her.”

“If she had been born a hundred years later, she would very likely have been encouraged to be angry, told she had a right to express her anger and her sorrow and her bewilderment and her rage, and generally to disintegrate. These were not the expectations of her friends and family. Nothing could have been further from her expectations of herself. Instead, she threw herself into serving others.”

“She has spent most of the day reading and is feeling rather out of touch with reality, as if her own life has become insubstantial in the face of the fiction she's been absorbed in.”

“Traffic is light as she leaves Mowbray. So is her heart. Light. Soon. Soon, she will be home. Strange how she was able to bear it -- bear being away. Until now. With a day to go, it has suddenly become unbearable. Since that party on Saturday night. Smashing send-off these lovely people gave her. Really smashing. So, why is she feeling so blue? Ah, well, she thinks to herself, I've always had a problem, saying goodbye.She hardly has a moment to breathe through the day. So busy. Her very last day at this place she has called home these ten months past. Here at the university too, many people want to talk about her trip back home. If only they knew. If only they knew. Excited as she is about the prospect of seeing her family, of going home, seeing her friends, with all that ... still, saying goodbye is not easy. Never has been for her. That is what she's doing now. How she wishes everybody would just forget she was going back home. But no. People insist on saying goodbye, on giving her party after party. Therefore, she is forced to take leave of her friends, to acknowledge the pain of parting. Bitter sweet. How she wishes she were home already. But, of course, before that can happen, she has to say goodbye to all these dear, dear friends, these people of whom she has grown so fond. But perhaps she will come back. Of course, she will come back, one day. A not too far-away day too, that's for sure.Yes, I can see how torn she must have felt. Excited and grieving. Happy and sad. At one and the same time. For the same, the very same, reason.”

“For thousands of years what men has done to women is simply monstrous. She cannot think of herself as equal as man. & she has been conditioned so deeply that even if u say she is equal, she is not going to believe it. It has become almost her mind, the conditioning has become her mind, that she is less in everithing. & the man who has reduced the women to such a state also cannot love her. LOVE CAN EXIST ONLY IN EQUALITY, IN FRIENDSHIP”

“He has been disassembled by her. And if she has brought him to this, what has he brought her to?”