Dreams of Joy

As she spoke, I wanted to cry, because sometimes it's just so damn hard to be a mother. We have to wait and wait and wait for our children to open their hearts to us. And if that doesn't work, we have to bide our time and look for the moment of weakness when we can sneak back into their lives and they will see us and remember us for the people who love them unconditionally.

Seeing something once is better than hearing about it a hundred times. Doing something once is better than seeing it a hundred times.

A brave heart? It feels like a swollen and aching thing in my chest.

My mother used to tell me that Heaven never seals off all exits.

I came here to be happy, and I’m going to be happy. If I smile, then maybe I can convince my body just how happy I am.

Miracles are everywhere, and as I watch my sister--forever, beautiful, forever my little sister--staring into the eyes of the one man she ever loved, I know that indeed things do return to the beginning. The world opens again, and I see a life of happiness without fear. I gaze at my family--complicated though it may be--and know that fate smiles on us.

Model communes are the ones where the leaders lie the best and the biggest.

It’s fair to say I don’t know what I’m doing. I like to plot my life and proceed carefully, but life doesn’t always follow a plan.

No matter what you’re feeling or how desperate you become, always take a moral position. If you do that, God will watch over you.

Maybe stories and memories are destined to be incomplete...

When you lose your home country, what do you preserve and what do you abandon?

The realization that truth, forgiveness, and goodness are more important than revenge, condemnation, and cruelty gives me courage and certainty.

The lotus symbolizes purity, because it rises out of the mud but looks pristine.

People are shaped by the earth and water around them.

Waves of heat shimmy off the tarmac, and the air is stiflingly hot, with humidity that’s even worse

I thought I could use idealism to solve my inner conflicts, but in healing my inner conflicts I destroyed my idealism.

To make an ox or water buffalo work so hard, it needs to be blinded and uninformed. That’s what the government is doing to the masses now.

BE KIND AND BENEVOLENT. MAKE A CASUAL STOP ON THE ENDLESS WAY TO THE FUTURE. and PUT ALL TROUBLES FROM YOUR MIND.