"Happiness is something you lay siege to, it is a battle like a game of go. I will take hold of all the pain and snuff it out."
- Shan Sa
"I have been brought up in a world dominated by honor. I have known neither crime, poverty, nor betrayal, and here I taste hatred for the first time: it is sublime, like a thirst for justice and reveng..."
"In our time women can demonstrate prowess in a thousand ways. Long ago the great Princess Sun of Ping fought for her father, the August Sovereign. At her funeral, His Majesty called for the trumpets a..."
"Men's freedom is their unfaithfulness: the Son of Heaven or the son of a peasant, they could both reduce me to the mediocre torments of a woman."
"Endless moons, an opaque universe, thunder, tornadoes, the quaking earth. Rare moments of peace; forehead up against my knees, arms around my head, I though, I listened, I longed not to exist. but lif..."
"A man who does not like power will suffer from its cruelty."
"My position at the Palace is our one opportunity. Have confidence in my destiny. Do not weep."
"I, the ordinary restless child, the plain adolescent, the commoner who had been a nun twice, would prove to be a Daughter of Heaven."
"In the closed world of the gynaeceum, despite the gardens and parkland extending beyong the horizon, despite the insurmountable walls separating pavillions and palaces, the tangled web of our fate was..."
"The moon in all her immaculate purity hung in the sky, laughing at this world of dust. She congratulated me for my carefully considered maneuvers and invited me to share in her eternal solitude."