Quote by Chiung Yao: “Time does not heal all wounds. It only teaches us to live with them.”

The popular idea that time heals everything is comforting but not quite honest. Some losses never disappear — they become part of you. What changes over time is not the wound but your capacity to carry it. This is a more truthful and ultimately more useful thing to know about grief.

Chiung Yao published her debut novel Outside the Window in 1963, drawing on her own forbidden love affair with a high school teacher. Taiwan in the early 1960s was under martial law imposed by the Kuomintang government, and personal and romantic freedom were constrained by both political control and strict social norms.

Taiwanese novelist and screenwriter born Chen Che, one of the most commercially successful romance writers in Chinese literary history. Her novels, including Outside the Window, have sold over 50 million copies and been adapted into numerous films and television dramas. She is a defining figure of popular Taiwanese fiction.