Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
People there only dream that it is China, because if you are Chinese you can never let go of China in your mind.
My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten.
My mother didn't teach me lessons about being Chinese as strongly as she did the notion of who I was as a female.
We are living in a world where everything is false. The society is like bright paint applied on top of rotten wood.
All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. -Ying Ying
I like to go somewhere where I learn something I didn't know before, like the Dry Tortugas between Florida and Cuba.
Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.
For woman is yin, the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.
I was punched breathless by the strongest emotions I have ever felt and they are now stored in my intuition as a writer.
When you already believe something, how can you suddenly stop? When you are a loyal friend, how can you no longer be one?
I am an American, steeped in American values. But I know on an emotional level what it means to be of the Chinese culture.
Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone.
Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this. Everyone else want best quality. You thinking different.
I am fascinated by language in daily life: the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.
You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.
I was shocked, and I ended up contacting three academics to find out if it could possibly be that my grandmother was a courtesan.
And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every direction.
I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn't understand her English, because she was Chinese.
When you lose your face..., it is like dropping your necklace down a well. The only way you can get it back is to fall in after it.
Now they seemed to be in a contest over who could irritate her more, and she sometimes had to remind herself that teenagers had souls
My mother always thought if her mother hadn't left her, she would have been happy. All the problems she had never would have happened.
We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense, and yet it is also absolutely necessary. In writing a story, it is the place where I begin.
My mother said I was a clingy kid until I was about four. I also remember that from the age of eight she and I fought almost every day.
We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. -Suyuan
They know where happiness lies, not in a cave or a country, but in love and the freedom to give and take what has been there all along.
I recognise why I have such a strong inability to forgive certain people who betray me. It's chiselled in, like a name on a tomb stone.
I felt foolish and tired, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind to discover there was no one there.
I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?
I feel I've always been writing about self-identity. How do we become who we are? So I'm just writing from experience what's concerned me.
Among writers, if you don't have a therapist, it's like saying you don't keep a journal or use the thesaurus. It's a natural accompaniment.
I would still like to have that luxury, to be able to just sit and draw for hours and hours and hours. In a way, that's what I do as a writer.
I think we often write because we feel a loneliness, and people read for the same reason, and then they come away feeling a little less lonely.
I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever.
But I don't have anything left inside of me to figure out where I fit in or what I want. If I want anything, it's to know what's possible to want.
I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice.
Wise guy, he not go against wind. In Chinese we say, Come from South, blow with wind -- poom! -- North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen.
So sad! This is the saddest part when you lose someone you love- that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost?
I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.
And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. -Rose
There are a lot of people who think that's what's needed to be successful is always being right, always being careful, always picking the right path.
It means we're looking one way, while following another. We're for one side and also the other. We mean what we say, but our intentions are different.
Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.
Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it - that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.
There's no hope. There's no reason to keep trying. Because you must. This is not hope. Not reason. This is your fate. This is your life, what you must do.
And I remember wondering why it was that eating something good could make me feel so terrible, while vomiting something terrible could make me feel so good.
You can't have intentions without consequences. The question is, who pays for the consequences? Saving fish from drowning. Same thing. Who’s saved? Who’s not?
From what I have observed, when the anesthesia of love wears off, there is always the pain of consequences. You don't have to be stupid to marry the wrong man.
I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.
How do I create something out of nothing? And how do I create my own life? I think it is by questioning, and saying to myself that there are no absolute truths.
You have to be your own person. You can't let people's opinions determine how you think about yourself. There's a difference between identity and self-identity.