Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow.

The quality of a country's institutions is the most important determinant of its success.

成功是个糟糕的老师。它让聪明人认为他们不能失败。

Nobody understands when a woman makes a choice to marry and have children, in one way her life begins, but in another way, it stops. You build a life of details, and you just stop and stay steady, so that your children can move. And when they leave,they take your life of details with them. You are expected to move on again, but you don't remember what it was that moved you, because no one's asked you in so long.Not even yourself.

The piano is my safe place—it’s where I can be completely myself.

The soul of a place is captured not in its monuments, but in its stories.

People tend to value things more highly when they own them.