Life is too short to be ringed by other people’s expectations of proper behavior.

The lie wasn’t meant to be believed. It was just social grease, intended to keep wheels turning.

She says – because darkness needs to be faced, needs to be denied – “You would have given me so much, in exchange for me giving up everything.

I’ll never be what you are. I’ll never walk in your skin. But that’s the doom of all parents. And I can tell you that it goes the same way for everyone. We all stumble. We all fail. You always do the same thing: you apologize and change, again and again and again. There’ll never be a place where everything is right, but we can try our best to strive towards it. It’s the striving that defines us. That makes us different from them.

She wanted to apologize again, but how many times could she repeat empty words without becoming empty herself?

Ssshhh. It’s all right.” And does it matter that it’s not, if it gets them through the night?

Anyway, the fire doesn’t matter. There will be other fires, my love, and we will survive them all.

We’ve discussed this before. Not just other people saying yes, but whether they mean it, or whether they’re just doing it because they’re afraid.

When I read 'Dream of Red Mansions,' I was really struck by the fact that it was built differently from a lot of genre works. Specifically, a lot of the events that should have taken centre-stage - wars, social upheavals - were seen entirely through the eyes of the women of a Chinese household.

It certainly seems as though a great majority of genre is conflict-focused and, not only that, but focused on large physical conflicts.