"Error can point the way to truth, while empty-headedness can only lead to more empty-headedness or to a career in politics "
— Barry Hughart (Bridge of Birds: A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was)

"An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet regardless of time ,space or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break. "
— Chinese Proverb

"China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese. "
— Charles de Gaulle

"In the dust of defeat as well as the laurels of victory there is a glory to be found if one has done his best."
— Eric Liddell

"Look son, the Human Pig.

(shocked)Mother, y-you're inhuman!

(deadpan)Another animal could do this?"
— Larry Gonick (Cartoon History of the Universe 2: Volumes 8-13)

"My Splendid Concubine, historical fiction by Lloyd Lofthouse
“I was struck by the beauty of the cover, and I certainly was not disappointed by the book’s contents. A fascinating illumination of nineteenth-century Chinese culture and the complex Englishman Robert Hart, the father of China’s modernization. Hart’s struggles adapting to Chinese culture, always feeling the pull and force of his Victorian British background, are compelling. His relationships with his concubine and his concubine’s sister are poignant—the novel is as much a study of the complexities of love as it is anything else. A powerful novel whose beauty exceeds that of the book’s cover.” Writer’s Digest judge, 2008

"
— Writer's Digest judge, 2008

"Apparently, sir you Chinese are far ahead of us in every respect, except that you don’t have entrepreneurs. And our nation, though it has no drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transportation, sense of hygiene, discipline, courtesy, or punctuality, ‘’does’’ have entrepreneurs. Thousands and thousands of them. Especially in the field of technology. And these entrepreneurs—"we" entrepreneurs—have set up all these outsourcing companies that virtually run America now."
— Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger)

"Our heads were jars of Maoist pork marinating in five-thousand-year-old feudalist soy sauce."
— Anchee Min (Katherine)