Things in Nature Merely Grow

by Yiyun Li

Not calling a fact by its name can be the beginning of cruelty and injustice.

When Vincent was around the same age, he asked, pointedly: “You understand suffering, and you write about suffering so well; why did you give birth to us?” A question for which I never had a good answer.

I have encountered many people’s anger, but I have rarely found angry people illuminating or inspiring. Too often their anger—a feeling, a reaction, an interpretation—is presented as fact, or, worse, truth.

Anything that prevents agitation or rumination is good for the mind.

(Here’s a small thing I’ve learned: if one is to send flowers as a gesture of condolence, better to ensure the flowers arrive already arranged in a vase.)

A mother can cook every meal with great care, but a mother’s care, like a point in geometry, is essential to the order of things, insubstantial in the scale of things.

“Never feel that you’re obliged to show your pain to the world,” she said. “Very few people deserve to see your tears.”

People, by behaving predictably and unimaginatively, are good only at confirming what I already know, and I think to myself: where you are is where the husks of life gather; where you are is where I won’t be.

There is no real salvation from one’s own life; books, however, offer the approximation of it.

And people who intentionally or unintentionally hurt other people: I have come to the conclusion that they cannot help themselves, and they cannot be helped. This is only an acknowledgment, and it is not understanding or forgiveness, neither of which I will give.