p.224
As he said this, Precious Auntie came back into my mind.
I was remembering how she taught me that everything,
even ink, had a purpose and a meaning:  Good ink cannot be
the quick kind, ready to pour out of a bottle.
You can never be an artist if your work comes without effort.
That is the problem with modern ink from a bottle.
You do not have to think.  You simply write what is swimming
on the top of your brain.  And  the top is nothing but
pond scum, dead leaves, and mosquito spawn.
But when you push an inkstick along an inkstone,
you take the first step to cleaning your mind and your heart.
You push and you ask yourself, What are my intentions?
What is in my heart that matches my mind?

p.295
Precious Auntie had once said words that were similar.
You should think about your character.  Know where you are
changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed
back again.
She said that when I first learned to grind ink.
She also said this when she was angry with me,
during the last days we were together.
And when I heard Teacher Pan talking about this 
same thing, I promised myself I would change and
become a better daughter.

Much had changed, and I wished Precious Auntie could see
how good my life was.  I was a teacher and a married woman.
I had both a husband and a father.  And they were good people,
unlike GaoLing's  in-laws, Changs.  My new family was
genuine and sincere to others, the same inside as they
showed outside.  Precious Auntie had taught me that was
important.  Good manners are not enough, she had said,
they are not the same as a good heart. 
Though Precious Auntie had been gone  for all these years,
I still heard her words, in happy and sad times,
when it was important.

p.347
At one time she had thought that adjustment was what every couple,
married or not, did, willingly or out of grudging necessity.
But had Art also accommodated to her?

p.402
"Think about your intentions," Bao Bomu says.
"What is in your heart, what you want to put in others'.
And side by side, Ruth and her grandmother begin.  Words flow.
They have become the same person, six years old, sixteen,
forty-six, eighty-two.  They write about what happened,
why it happened, how they can make other things happen.
They write stories of things that are but should not have
been.  They write about what could have been, what still might be.
They write of a past that can be changed.
After all, Bao Bomu  says, what is the past but what we
choose to remember?  They can choose not to hide it,
to take what's broken, to feel the pain and know that
it will heal.  They know where happiness lies,
not in a cave or a country, but in love and the freedom
to give and take what has been there all along.

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