- Narrator: I will read. I will study. I will learn. If you try to stop me, I will just try harder.
- Narrator: How could so much beauty and so much meanness be together in one world?
- Narrator: Girls are not the problem, they're the problem-solvers. You want to slow the spread of AIDS? Educate a girl. You want to grow the world economy? Educate a girl.
- Narrator: I was 11 years old when my father arranged for me to be married.
- Narrator: I had heard of the thousands of girls so to men in those places.
- Narrator: I can't really talk about everything that happened to me here... but I will never forget.
- Narrator: We have come to this house... the house of her master... to say you must set her free.
- Narrator: There is no miracle here... just a girl with dreams.
- Nattator: Even if you send me away, I will come back every day... until I can stay.
- Narrator: If you stop me, there will be other girls who will rise up and take my place.
- Narrator: I am change.
- Narrator: I am my own master now.
- Narrator: I feel as though... I have power.
- Narrator: Now there's nothing to stop me.
- Narrator: I feel I can do anything.
- [first lines]
- Narrator: This is a simple story. And it did not begin here. This thing of beauty, a joy forever. Rising. This warm glow in darkness, like the harvest moon. A Khmer proverb whispers, "Celebrate when the moon is bright." But for years, she was a child of the dump.
- Narrator: When I wasn't minding the goats, I had to mind the children. The goats were nicer.
- Narrator: [evicted in the rain] A thousand rivers flowing with life. And us, adrift. No place in the soaking world for roots to take hold. Everyone was crying, even my drawings.