The first time she saw the boy across the classroom, Ah Lee knew she was in love because she tasted durian on her tongue.

Whether I'm a good wife doesn't have anything to do with what he was like.

I can speak four dialects, but none of them is fairy language.

I brought seaweed snacks from home, ' chimed in another kid. "Seaweed got iron, right?"'I don't think the teachers meant that kind of iron, ' said Hui Ann.

But a woman should not marry where there is no respect. Respect is the most important thing.

He would gaze at her with intrigued longan seed eyes.

Love was like swallowing a cili padi whole.

Sometimes in the winter, when the fog rolled in and silenced the waves, it felt as if death had its fingers around my neck. Fingers like frostbitten twigs that made me ache inside.

There is always stardust in my eyes when I look at you, my love.

To regret your soul is to regret your past.

I don't see myself being an actress forever.

One sort of believes in recycling. But one believes in it as a kind of palliative to the gods.

To lead yourself, use your head; to lead others, use your heart. Always touch a person's heart before you ask him for a hand.

For we are so preciously loved by God that we cannot even comprehend it.

If you love yourself, if you truly love yourself, then you'll see other people in yourself, and you won't behave that way.

I think love could have saved Kurt Cobain.

...the greatest source of misery in the world, the greatest cause of anguish and hatred and sadness and death, was neither disease nor race nor religion. It was hope.