j a c > j a c's Quotes

“We had the stars, you and I. And this is given once only.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Call me by your name and I'll call you by mine.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“I changed what I could, and what I couldn't, I endured.”
― Margot Lee Shetterly, Hidden Figures

“failure is a feeling long before it’s an actual result.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“At fifty-four, I am still in progress, and I hope that I always will be.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child—What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. the pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and giver her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation.”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club