Do Not Say We Have Nothing

by Madeleine Thien

“What did the Buddhist say to the pizza maker?” “What?” “Make me one with everything.”

😅☯

Each word is filed under its root, also known as a radical. For instance, means gate, but it is also a radical, that is, the building block for other words and concepts. If light, or the sun , shines through the gate, we have space . If there is a horse inside the gate, this is an ambush , and if there is a mouth inside the gate, we have a question . If there is an eye and a dog inside, we have quiet .

Chinese dictionary.

I felt she saw into me, past every facade and flourish, and that the more she knew me, the more she loved me. I was too young, then, to know how lasting this kind of love is, how rarely it comes into one’s life, how difficult it is to accept oneself, let alone another. I carried this security — Ai-ming’s love, the love of an older sister — out of my childhood and into my adult life.

"The more she knew me, the more she loved me." I always love this thought, because, in the heart, what is there between knowledge and love? Do they not occupy the same space? There is more generalized love, I suppose. And there are kinds of love that are more about desire, or about ourselves. So, yes, the kind of compassionate love that is inescapable and indelible and as true as the knowledge we hold of another soul......... "I was too young, then, to know how lasting this kind of love is, how rarely it comes into one’s life, how difficult it is to accept oneself, let alone another."

sucked her teeth.

cleaning the house, from top to bottom and from right to left.

He hurled objects across the room as the security officers, pale and unconditioned, knocked each other down in their haste to escape the careening objects of Ba Lute. Sparrow’s father was taller than ever but only half as round, and therefore twice as intimidating.

This book is a romantic fantasy! Throwing things at the police as they storm your house... Not in Utopia or in this setting.

He liked to shock her. She refused to laugh. “I don’t believe anything you say, Kai.” He took her hand and held it. “I’m glad, Zhuli. Never trust me.” He leaned forward and pressed his mouth to her cheek and then to her lips. The warmth of his mouth humiliated her, she turned her face but he kept holding on to her hand, the heat of his breath against her ear. Just at the moment when she wanted to give in, to kiss him fiercely, he had released her fingers. “Do what the old violinist says,” Kai told her. He continued as if nothing unusual had occurred. “Play the Ravel. I can do the accompaniment, if you wish.” “Fine,” she said. She was trembling. He had switched gears as smoothly as a bird circling, as unequivocally as a madman. “Since you like it so much.” When he left, she had picked up her violin again. How had he dared? But a giddy, shameful pleasure had swelled inside her. Why had she allowed him?