Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness Quotes

“Then too there was the irrepressible librarian in her who could not stand by and watch a human being in distress without leaping to her aid, whether that person could not find the coin slot on the copier or was on the brink of domestic destruction.”
― Jennifer Tseng, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness

“It seemed to me people who omitted possessive pronouns were capable of great intimacies, those that defied context and transcended possession.”
― Jennifer Tseng, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness

“In the midst of my new productivity I came, at last, to appreciate passivity, to view it as its own kind of audacity ... Passivity is also the cousin of patience, which is, I think, a distant relative of faith. Doesn't the act of waiting imply faith in the arrival?”
― Jennifer Tseng, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness

“Our closeness never made us complacent. We understood each other's value; we understood that even the one closest to us must be sought.”
― Jennifer Tseng, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness

“Doesn't intimacy foster reverence more completely than anything that can be taught?”
― Jennifer Tseng, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness

“I found it to be a beautiful tendency, a sign of good health that one's eyes should open rather than shut at the sound of a human voice telling a story.”
― Jennifer Tseng, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness

“I have lived on a series of islands and I began as an island: I, an obscure piece of earth, floating choiceless within my mother's sea.”
― Jennifer Tseng, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness