22 quotes found
“Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.”
“Auntie Yang is not hard of hearing. She is hard of listening.”
“When a husband stops paying attention to the garden, he's thinking of pulling up roots.”
“Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.”
“Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this. Everyone else want best quality. You thinking different.”
“Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else's joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.”
“And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters ...”
“It's not that we had no heart or eyes for pain. We were all afraid. We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable...What ...”
“And now at the airport, after shaking hands with everybody, waving good-bye, I think about all the different ways we leave people in this world. Cheerily waving good-bye to some at airports, knowin...”
“And for all those years, we never talked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible accusations afterward at the piano bench. All that remained unchecked, like a betrayal that was now unbreak...”
“She would be quiet at first. Then she would say a word about something small, something she had noticed, and then another word, and another, each one flung out like a little piece of sand, one from...”
“You can't stay in the dark for too long. Something inside you starts to fade, and you become like a starving person, crazy-hungry for light.”
“But you can't stay in the dark for so long. Something inside of you starts to fade and you become like a starving person, crazy-hungry for light.”
“ wisdom is like a bottomless pond. You throw stones in and they sink into darkness and dissolve. Her eyes looking back do not reflect anything.I think this to myself even though I love my daughter....”
“What should we do?", I asked, and I had a pained feeling I thought was the beginning of love. In those early months we clung to each other with a rather silly desperation, because, in spite of ever...”
“A psychiatrist does not want you to wake up. He tells you to dream some more, to find the pond and pour more tears into it. And really, he's just another bird drinking from your misery.”
“My mother believed in God's will for many years. It was af if she had turned on a celestial faucet and goodness kept pouring out. She said it was faith that kept all these good things coming our wa...”
“That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.”
“Can I tell my daughter that I loved her father? This was the man who rubbed my feet at night. He praised the food that I cooked. He cried honestly when I brought out trinkets I had saved for the ri...”
“Auntie An-mei had cried before she left for China, thinking she would make her brother very rich and happy by communist standards. But when she got home, she cried to me that everyone had a palm ou...”
