Hildred Condiff

“He smelled like the sea even after he had bathed. When he wasn’t fishing, he sat on the floor in our dark front room mending a fishing net. And if a fishing net had been a sleeping creature, he wouldn’t even have awakened it, at the speed he worked. He did everything this slowly.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“People keep asking me why I don’t return to China. I tell them I can’t return to a place I’ve never been. In”
― Lisa See, Shanghai Girls

“These are not red or blue issues—they are the human rights issues of our generation. We are here begging for our lives. If today’s political officeholders cannot accomplish real change on guns and gun issues, we will vote together on these issues in the next election and elect their successors . . .”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal High

“I prayed that our growth would be as strong and determined as the seeds of coconut palms, boldly reaching skyward toward the sun diligently boring deeper into the earth to secure a firm foundation for the beautiful, durable, fruit-bearing trees they would become. For me, Mhonda was the place to continue the growth of the still young but strong roots of my tree planted in Kifungilo. This was my life now, the life I’d prayed for, the life that would provide me with an education and would open doors. I wanted this life very much. I told my wavering spirit to bear with me because, just like the coconut palm, I would sway and bend and bruise, but I would survive. I would have to become the tree in the African saying: ‘The tree that bends with the wind does not break.”
― Maria Nhambu, Africa's Child