Dreams of Joy (Shanghai Girls, #2)

by Lisa See

“My mother and aunt always said you can’t know luxury until you’re deprived of it.

I keep thinking of my mother, who used to tell me I should beware the trait I carry common to all those born in the Year of the Dragon: a Dragon, believing he is just, will often bound headlong into a disastrous situation.

“Seeing something once is better than hearing about it a hundred times. Doing something once is better than seeing it a hundred times.”

Just remember, a person is his—or her—history. If your history isn’t good, then you won’t be good. A rebel as a five-year-old will be a rebel as a young man and will die a rebel.

No thrust into the heart is greater or more harmful than that from one who says she loves you the most.

“Always show the greatest kindness to the ones you like the least.

Give a low man one ounce of power and he’ll throw ten thousand pounds of bricks on your head.

To make an ox or water buffalo work so hard, it needs to be blinded and uninformed. That’s what the government is doing to the masses now. Why? Because peasants are China’s true beasts of burden.

“If a man is a mountain and a woman is water, then it is the woman who confirms the mountain’s existence. As water, a woman can go anywhere. It gives life. It nurtures life. A man is reflected in her water.”