Alexandra Chang > Quotes

“And from those brief moments I was living with a certainty that I was exactly where I should be, where everything is deeply quiet and deeply alive. I thought about the many aspects in this life that I could not control or understand despite how much I wanted to or tried. How my father’s life, my mother’s life, the lives around me and the figures from the past they are not mine to determine, not mine to map out no matter how much they shaped what I had become however much we were connected. I could only help in small ways, I could listen and piece together and recount. But what was truly mine was only a little, no, a miniscule speck of it all. And while this is a sort of devastation to me, when I knew it would take some time to fully accept, it felt nice at least to be on the way in spite of not knowing exactly how far I had come nor how far I have left to go.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“A natural response to chaos is the desire for control.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“❝It is the nature of relationships that they are impossible to fully understand from the outside. Their inner workings both from memories and habits and histories made out of exterior world and from those known only between the two involved that exists only through them and are lost when they are lost to each other. A relationship is particular in the way people are particular. Whatever lesson one can glean from people’s relationships can only be taken in pieces assembled into bare minimal instructions. ❞”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“Lying there in her cramped room, in her small bed, Fufu, now eighteen, feels as though her world is the least significant seed in a pomegranate. She yearns for the whole fruit.”
― Alexandra Chang, Tomb Sweeping

“But what the people who say that don’t understand is: when in all aspects of life the odds are entirely against you, it can be worth paying for even a tiny increase in hope.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“It seems, in this case, he who grows up without want has the luxury of satisfaction. She who grows up wanting is never satiated.”
― Alexandra Chang, Tomb Sweeping

“Colonialism looking and tasting better than it should. And should I be enjoying it as much as I am?”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“What greater loneliness and longing is there than living with someone you once knew so well, and who is now hardly around?”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“People will compete and never relax and always try to innovate and achieve until they are so high-strung that the world collapses.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“It’s not a lack of confidence in oneself preventing people from going after jobs where they don’t meet all of the qualifications, but a lack of confidence in other people’s abilities to view them as capable of doing the job, and therefore hiring them,” said the leadership expert, who had surveyed one thousand people to come to this conclusion. “The main barrier is not a mistaken perception about themselves, but a mistaken perception of what is a real requirement or rule, of how processes like these truly work, and this is especially a problem for women.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“No matter how long we stay in this country, and no matter how “accent-free” our children learn to speak English, we are still regarded as foreigners, and as “foreigners” we are suspect as an enemy from overseas. —Helen Zia, 1984”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“simply watch him, driving, rubbing his eyes, yawning, I was calm and inexplicably content; I could see pieces of our lives floating among the snowflakes, melting on the windshield, and for those brief moments I was living with the certainty that I was exactly where I should be, where everything was deeply quiet yet deeply alive.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“He patted my hand with both ofhis ,hands. After he walked away, I went to wash the contaminated limb. Repeat. I look in the mirror. Repeat.
I don't recall once smiling in front of him.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“It is difficult to parse which parts of me come from my family, from being Chinese, from being Asian American, from being American, from being a woman, from being of a certain generation, and from, simply, being.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“He makes a disgusting warbling sound that is some diseased form of laughter.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“In the direct glare of his feeling, I realized how broken Waigong had been. Though my grandfather was only twelve during the Battle of Singapore, he remembered the fear and the chaos and the hate and the revenge for the rest of his life.”
― Alexandra Chang, Tomb Sweeping

“As long as I’ve known them, my parents have bought lottery tickets. I don’t. Then, at least, I am completely certain I will not win. The certainty is more manageable for me than the cycle of hoping/not knowing and losing and hoping/not knowing and losing. The poor man’s tax, I’ve heard it called. Or worse, the stupid tax. But what the people who say that don’t understand is: when in all aspects of life the odds are entirely against you, it can be worth paying for even a tiny increase in hope.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“Everything hit her. She was different, she was foreign, she was illegal. She couldn't qualify for the loans and scholarships to afford college. What had been the point of following the rules? Of doing well in school? Of obeying everyone when, technically, her existence itself was illegitimate?”
― Alexandra Chang, Tomb Sweeping

“At the end of the line, he hugs me. He pats me on the back and says, “Don’t worry, Jing Jing. Focus on yourself. You’ll figure things out. You get it from me. You’re my daughter.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“While J is gone, I am afraid of the dark and ghosts. When I wake up in the middle ofthe night and need to pee, I lie there in my half sleep wondering if I can hold it until morning, if it is worth getting up and going through the dark spaces to the bathroom. There are more embarrassing fears than this. Like of aliens and downs and mind control by radio waves. I curse Nickelodeon's Are You Afraid ofthe Dark? The answer to which was a resounding yes for '90s children nationwide. Don't be ridiculous, I tell myself.
Still, I turn on the bedroom light, then the living room light, then the kitchen light, then the bathroom light. And when I turn off
each light behind me, I walk faster toward the lighted areas, until I am back in bed, head under the blanket, having a very difficult time getting back to sleep.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“I have no coherent thoughts, just a rush of feeling, like oversaturated, garish bursts of color.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“It is the nature of relationships that they are impossible to fully understand from the outside. Their inner workings both from memories and habits and histories made out of exterior world. And from those known only between the two involved that exists only through them and are lost when they are lost to each other. A relationship is particular in the way people are particular. Whatever lesson one can glean from people’s relationships can only be taken in pieces assembled into bare minimal instructions.”
― Alexandra Chang

“One’s early experiences in a new place are the most charged. They imprint the deepest and have the most influence over how one relates to that place.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“You can’t live without good water or air - that’s why people are so unhealthy in China these days. They have to go around wearing masks all the time, but the masks don’t do anything.”
― Alexandra Chang, Tomb Sweeping

“What does it mean to be mixed up?' i asked, thinking of my grandfather's accusations.

The medium laughed softly, as though to blanket a cry. 'I don't know,' he said. He drew a circle in the sand with his bare toes. 'I don't like to think of myself that way. I like, instead, to think that my parents put me in perfect symmetry with this country's history. Perhaps it's better to think that people like me are not mixed up, as some might say, but that we have access to more than one side of the story.”
― Alexandra Chang, Tomb Sweeping

“He patted my hand with both of his hands. After he walked away, I went to wash the contaminated limb. Repeat. I look in the mirror. Repeat.
I don't recall once smiling in front of him.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“Jasmine and I look at each other, like, is she serious? Then Jasmine conveys to me, with a flutter of her eyelids, what do you expect, she’s not like us. Yes, sometimes we are this good at understanding one another. When our similarities align in a sort of power.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“It is the nature of relationships that they are impossible to fully understand from the outside. Their inner workings both from memories and habits and histories made out of exterior world and from those known only between the two involved that exists only through them and are lost when they are lost to each other. A relationship is particular in the way people are particular. Whatever lesson one can glean from people’s relationships can only be taken in pieces assembled into bare minimal instructions.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

“It is difficult to parse which parts of me come from my family, from being Chinese, from being Asian American, from being American, from being a woman, from being of a super generation, and from, simply, being.”
― Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction