Haven't we all, as time continues, found that we must be kind to ourselves and listen to our thoughts, because fewer and fewer of those remain who know what is most real to us?
What do you mean by yuanfen?She thought for a minute and replied, It means: that apportionment of love which is destined for you in this world.
She'll be an excellent novelist: a monster of self-absorption.
It's because of the way you are. It's why you're happy reading novels. You're only comfortable with a piece of the world that you can hold in your hand.
Who would one rather be? The one who desires, or the object of desire? One's answer to this question might determine if he is meant to be a poet or something else entirely.
Like ginseng roots, our buried pasts have different shapes.
For it is through humility, he knew, that holiness--and poetry--find entrance to the human soul.
If I could change a single thing about my life,' she said gently, 'I would not have been so unhappy when I was young.
Inadequate love is love. Unrequited love is love.
For each of us, he understood, is born into our own time and eventually the things we held as the center of our world, dearly, unforgivingly, must fade.
The inner Min starved; she woke in the middle of the night, then lay for hours wondering what was wrong.
The people who matter the most to us in the end, who teach us the most, are the people who make their worst mistakes with us.