"The swordswoman and I are not so dissimilar. May my people understand the resemblance soon so that I can return to them. What we have in common are the words at our backs. The idioms for revenge are 'report a crime' and 'report to five families.' The reporting is the vengeance-not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words."

Source : Maxine Hong Kingston (2010). “The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts”, p.62, Vintage

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