Old Town Quotes

“The sweet, lovely voices of the children were like honey, like grape wine, intoxicating him, entrancing him, so he couldn’t tell heaven from earth.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“Having a friend who understands you is all you need in life.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“For ten years now he had never forgotten that obedience to authority was the Christian’s duty, but every day of these ten years had passed in struggle and pain. All he could do was shut his eyes and cover his ears, and in this way escape reality. Restore Order told him that he hadn’t been wrong. It was the world that had been wrong.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“Everyone said that Jiang Qing tried to become a woman empress just like Wu Zetian, and so she created total chaos.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“Grandma once said that fortune-telling revealed God’s plan and would anger him.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“In it she spoke of her views on the conditions of the country and on Marshal Lin Biao57 and Jiang Qing.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“And that cadre had been marked by Jiang Qing56 as a secret agent.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“Both had just passed thirty, that age at which Confucius said he had taken his stand.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“Jesus is not Bodhisattva. Jesus is God. First throw away that clay Bodhisattva and I’ll go call Mrs. Chen to pray for you.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“Love, marriage, pregnancy and birth, all followed logic and nature.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“Many people who on the surface appear weak and spineless actually are surprisingly tough inside”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“THERE’S SO MUCH chance behind just our births alone. Everyone arrives in this world as the result of a string of accidents, that’s all. People find this idea discouraging.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“Actually, the terror and panic that people feel in confronting disaster more often than not is even more painful than actually going forward to endure the disaster.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“That’s right, the little flowers and plants don’t have ideology. Every day they wear pretty clothes. The birds in the trees don’t have any ideology and every day they sing happy songs.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“He very much doubted that people’s thinking could possibly be all the same. There would always be those who tended to the left and those who tended to the right. It was precisely the left and the right checking and containing each other that things never ended up in too great a deviation either way.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“The dynasties come and go, but these people whose livelihood was the sea never changed from one generation to the next.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“I don’t know “God,” and deep inside I don’t believe “God” exists. But I am obsessed with the idea of being loved unconditionally and I long with the fervor of a religious believer to love a man who has no flaws. I’m looking…I’m waiting…”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“People laugh at the blind man feeling the elephant. In fact, in this confused and tumultuous cosmos of a billion universes, who isn’t a blind man feeling an elephant? Each person can stand at only a certain perspective and interpret the world based on his or her own cognitive powers.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“Not knowing was no sin.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“One thing I learned: in 1937 one hundred yuan in paper currency could buy two cows, but by 1947, that same amount could only buy one coal briquette. One year later, one hundred yuan couldn’t even get you one grain of rice!”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“He also had a classmate who called himself a communist sympathizer because communism and Christianity had no essential differences between them. The basic ideas of communism were to level the differences between rich and poor, the equality of all people, and food for people to eat.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“Enchun, today is your eighteenth birthday. You’re now a grown-up. We know that from the time you were little you have loved the Lord. Surely you are willing to tell Jesus with your own voice that you long to be his child, and with your own voice will ask the Lord Jesus to forgive you your sins.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“Enchun, today is your eighteenth birthday. You’re now a grown-up. We know that from the time you were little you have loved the Lord. Surely you are willing to tell Jesus with your own voice that you long to be his child, and with your own voice will ask the”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“She also said that ten “thousand gold pieces,” that is, ten girls, could never match even one idiot son.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“Physically they lived in drunken debauchery; spiritually they were already dead.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“You know the saying: ‘A scholar meets a soldier—reason can say nothing to force.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“It wasn’t until Grandpa realized his own Great Day of Departure was approaching, that, sick as he was, he burned those papers. Personal history confessions wouldn’t be needed in heaven.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“After I finished university the house underwent a renovation, and the newly fixed doorsill was now higher by one inch. I can’t tell you how many times I tripped on that one inch. I know very well that the sill is now higher, but even when I lift my step I still trip on it.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“When she really couldn’t stand it any longer, she would go to the West Lake church to ask the pastor to help her pray. She believed that his prayer had more power than hers and was more likely to move the Holy Spirit.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town

“Fate was God’s plan for everyone. She bore the pain and accepted what was real.”
― Lin Zhe, Old Town