“The Manchus drank tea with a lot of milk. In her case, the milk came from the breasts of a nurse. Cixi had been taking human milk since her prolonged illness in the early 1880s, on the recommendation of a renowned doctor. Several wet nurses were employed, and took turns to squeeze milk into a bowl for her. The nurses brought their sucking babies with them, and the woman who served her the longest stayed on in the palace, her son being given education and an office job.”

“But then, if you forget what's bad, cruel, unjust, you might not care anymore about setting things to rights. You might stop standing up against the folk who do evil deeds. And someone's got to.”

“Walk through the fire and you will emerge on the other end, whole and stronger. I promise. You will ultimately find truth and beauty and wisdom and peace. You will understand that nothing lasts forever, not pain, or joy. You will understand that joy cannot exist without sadness. Relief cannot exist without pain. Compassion cannot exist without cruelty. Courage cannot exist without fear. Hope cannot exist without despair. Wisdom cannot exist without suffering. Gratitude cannot exist without deprivation. Paradoxes about in this life. Living is an exercise in navigating within them.”

“The key to a successful education is not remembering the sequence of battles in World War I or getting an A on the geometry test. A robust education is the ability to make meaningful use of any and all information.”

“But while I'd be their daughter, while I'd eat the roast and come home from dates and wash the dishes, I would also be myself. I would love my mother, but I'd never want to be her again. I would never be what someone else wanted me to be. I would never laugh at a joke I didn't think was funny. I would never tell another lie. I would be the truth-teller, starting today. That would be tough. But I was tougher.”

“in order to invent heaven and hell a man would need to know nothing except the human body”

“... humility is just a humiliation you loved so much it transformed.”

“A lot of truths about the living world are recorded in bad books; they are just badly written about.”