Homeseeking Quotes

“Suchi knew now that home wasn't a place. It wasn't moments that could be pinned down. It was people, people who share the same ghosts as you, folks long gone, places long disappeared. People who knew you, saw you, loved you. When those people were far-flung, your home was too. And when those people were gone, home lived on inside of you.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“Life was dynamic and vast, and she wondered if she'd ever be able to experience enough of it to feel satisfied, if she could die happy knowing she'd only gotten to rub up against the small corner of the world she lived in.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“You know the word mingyun, right? Your personal destiny in this life? Think about the two characters that make up the word. Ming is the inherent nature of your life as given to you by the gods. It's a destiny that can't be changed, the way the innate characteristics you are born with can't be changed. But what is yun? Yun is where flexibility comes in. Yun is fortune that changes with the seasons of the universe but can also turn depending on the actions you take, the choices you make. Together ming and yun make up a river, one that wants to carry you to a particular destination but moves fluidly, possibly diverging if a tree falls along its path or a large rainfall swells its banks. You, too, can change the path of the river; you can even swim upstream if you want to. Just expect it will be tiring, not as easy as moving with the current.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“Without access to information, ordinary citizens will always be caged in dark rooms, only able to believe whatever people on the outside tell them is true.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“Do you realize,' she said as the last protestors trailed away, 'that we've never known peace? Our entire lives, this country's been at war.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“Suchi laughed, full bellied and open-mouthed. Her laughter sounded exactly as he recalled, like spring rain upon glass.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“How he longed to live a synthesis of all the lives he had lived and not lived, a life in which he held on to Line and his daughters while still having his parents age beside him, meeting the children he and Suchi would have borne. "I'm greedy," he acknowledged out loud. "We don't get to be greedy," Such said. "We get to be content.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“For many people in the world, learning more than one language is a necessity, either because of migration or simply because the place they live in is a global one and survival dictates it. It is a skill that requires an ability to adapt and challenge oneself, and for many immigrants, it’s one of the most difficult, humbling, and uneasy parts of coming to a new country. If you, the reader, find yourself confused, I hope instead of giving up, you might take a moment to imagine what it must be like for those who have to navigate this on a daily basis, and then forge onward.

(In her Note on languages)”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“Mr. Portnoy once told him music was a composer’s conversation with God, that in playing or singing, anyone—priest or pauper, Christian or Jewish, old man or young woman—would have an audience with the heavens. Aside from the occasional temple visits his parents had forced upon him as a boy, Howard had never been religious, but he felt an element of truth to this, for he did experience something otherworldly vibrate in him when he played particularly”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“No problem," he said. No problem was one of his favorite English phrases. It disarmed sticky situations, offered a measure of vagueness when he did not want to lie but knew better than to tell the truth. It was a phrase that meant many things and yet also nothing.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“That’s why I read all kinds of papers, to see what each one says. So I can compare. I consider not just what they’re saying but how they’re saying it. And I measure what they’re saying against what I know of the world, what I’ve seen and experienced with my own eyes, what I’ve learned about human nature and history. I don’t ingest words like I’m a hollow gourd.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“For many people in the world, learning more than one language is a necessity, either because of migration or simply because the place they live in is a global one and survival dictates it. It is a skill that requires an ability to adapt and challenge oneself, and for many immigrants, it’s one of the most difficult, humbling, and uneasy parts of coming to a new country. If you, the reader, find yourself confused, I hope instead of giving up, you might take a moment to imagine what it must be like for those who have to navigate this on a daily basis, and then forge onward.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“Did I ever tell you the moment I realized I was in love with you?' [...] 'It was when you came and met me at school one afternoon. It had been raining. And of course, I hadn't brought an umbrella, even though I'm sure my mother had warned me to. But then there you were. Waiting for me with an umbrella in your hand. Despite the fact that you were so often absent-minded when it came to yourself, you knew me well enough to know I wouldn't have brought one. You were the first person apart from my family to care for me like that. [...] I thought to myself, This is someone who will do this for me for the rest of our lives. And I could see all the umbrellas you would bring me, a line of them stretching into infinity, the skin of your palm on their handles becoming more creased over time, your hair turning thinner and grayer.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“Did I ever tell you the moment I realized I was in love with you?' [...] 'It was when you came and met me at school one afternoon. It had been raining. And of course, I hadn't brought an umbrella, even though I'm sure my mother had warned me to. But then there you were. Waiting for me with an umbrella in your hand. Despite the fact that you were so often absent-minded when it came to yourself, you knew me well enough to know I wouldn't have brought one. You were the first person apart from my family to care for me like that. [...] I thought to myself, This is someone who will do this for me for the rest of our lives. And I could see all the umbrellas you would bring me, a line of them stretching into infinity, the skin of your palm on their handles becoming more creased over time, your hair turning thinner and grayer.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“She wants to tell her children to stop arguing. The past doesn't matter anymore; they all did what they had to in order to live. She wants to tell them what matters most is family- it is the only thing that matters, the only way to make a home. They alone will remember Haiwen when she is gone. They alone will remember their father, and soon, her. She wants to tell them people only die when there is no one left to remember them, but if they hold each other tightly, they can keep all the ghosts of their family alive.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“There'd been moments when he wasn't even sure he still loved her. Yet, by the end, they were bound by their history, by the pain and laughter that could never be understood by anybody else. He missed her companionship above all.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“Life was dynamic and vast, and she wondered if she’d ever be able to experience enough of it to feel satisfied, if she could die happy knowing she’d only gotten to rub up against the small corner of the world she lived in.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“A boat doesn’t get to its destination by current alone; it still requires steering. You have good opportunity luck right now, but not if you squander it.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“Howard understood that loneliness. Each morning he woke up to an empty house and expected to hear Linyee in the kitchen, pots clanging, a mug being washed, a soap opera keening on the television set. Instead, he heard nothing but the breeze in the trees, or a lone pigeon purring, or the neighbors mowing their lawn.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“He wants to remember every pore, every stray hair, wants to emblazon her into his memory, even as he is certain he will always know her, that even if he is an old man by the time he returns to her, even if she has aged and changed,”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“She thought about the memories he had cherished, the ones he spent so long holding onto, so long examining. She had never imagined as she tried to erase her past, there’d been someone out there who felt she was worth remembering.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“How he longed to live a synthesis of all the lives he had lived and not lived, a life in which he held on to Linyee and his daughters while still having his parents age beside him, meeting the children he and Suchi would have borne. "I'm greedy," he acknowledged out loud. "We don't get to be greedy," Such said. "We get to be content.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“Suchi knew now that home wasn't a place. It wasn't moments that could be pinned down. It was people. People who shared the same ghosts as you of folks long gone, places long disappeared. People who knew you, saw you, loved you. When those people were far flung, your home was, too. And when those people were gone, home lived on inside you.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“Briefly, while he’d been talking to Tsai Linyee, he’d forgotten his grief, and this alarmed him. What if it leaked out of his brain like the music?”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“Doudou and Suchi are birds on the wind. They are flying toward her, branches laden with berries in their beaks. They warble a song. But the branches slip and fall. The children dive away. They are fish in this ocean, being pulled away by the current. Wait, she wants to say. Come back. She has to build a boat, a lighthouse, a siren. She has to call them home.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m afraid of a lifetime of remembering the things I want to forget.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“Suchi knew now that home wasn’t a place. It wasn’t moments that could be pinned down. It was people, people who shared the same ghosts as you, of folks long gone, places long disappeared. People who knew you, saw you, loved you. When those people were far-flung, your home was too. And when those people were gone, home lived on inside you.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“Children made no sense. You could spend hours trying to convince your child that a red cup was just as good as a blue cup and they’d refuse to see the logic in that. And yet they could see the violent actions of an animal and immediately empathize with why the creature might have been provoked into them.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking

“Her sister's eyes were staring at her, pleading, glossy, full of fear. Suchi saw, suddenly, what it must have cost her all these years to act the big sister, to be the rock for Suchi.”
― Karissa Chen, Homeseeking