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“We always remember what we want to forget, and forget what we want to remember,”
That gray, sunless afternoon taught her something the school never had: for everything she wanted, there would be something else she had to give up, as the price.
Truth is like water, assuming the shape of whatever it flows into.
Hunger teaches us skills in a day that would otherwise take us twenty years to learn.
Hunger defeats fear, every time.
Meng Long is my memory. I kept him alive for decades until I put him in words and lines, then I killed him. Writers are murderers: we give life and then take it away, in a most premeditated way.
Wise men use their memory as if it were some sort of fertilizer. “We grow from our past experiences,” they would brag. I am a fool and I use my memory as if it were a pillow, to sleep and to dream on.
Revelation is indeed cruel, and truth is expensive. At times I wonder whether I can afford it. It’s
A vigorous rinsing will take care of it, Mother argued, with a philosopher’s wisdom, a scientist’s cool, and a beggar’s pride.
When there was no shame, there was no fear, hence no hurt.
A marriage is like a pair of shoes: only the wearer knows whether they fit, went the old saying.
The first thing that jumped into her vision were the sunflowers. Tall, zealous, regal, pure yellow flames, reaching up and out, dauntlessly. No apology for the space they were taking. No intention of blending in, inconspicuously, with the rest of the garden. A proud world of their own.
Don’t people always love the things they hate?
What a selective and convenient memory.
So often we work just for bread, and mine is a thin slice, but one may find a surprise reward in it sometimes.
Mother, the only educated one of his five wives, failed to grasp the most rudimentary truth of life: a hundred accomplished daughters couldn’t fill the role of one most mediocre son.
One doesn’t need to apologize for a wish to live any more than for the desire to eat or breathe.
Shame bonds people more than love ever will.
Who can go through a war unscathed, after all, without suffering some sort of sickness of the soul?
The enemy of an enemy is not necessarily a friend.
