When you already believe something, how can you suddenly stop? When you are a loyal friend, how can you no longer be one? - Amy Tan

People look at me as this very, I don't know, Confucius-like wise person — which I'm not. They don't see all the shit that I've been through.

...A mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place. She teaches you the nature of happiness: what is the right amount, what is too much, and the kind that makes you want more of what is bad for you. A mother helps her baby flex her first feelings of pleasure. She teaches her when to later exercise restraint, or to take squealing joy in recognizing the fluttering leaves of the gingko tree, to sense a quieter but more profound satisfaction in chancing upon an everlasting pine. A mother enables you to realize that there are different levels of beauty and therein lie the sources of pleasure, some of which are popular and ordinary, and thus of brief value, and others of which are difficult and rare, and hence worth pursuing.

Whenever others disapprove of you, you must disregard them and be the only