Dragon Springs Road Quotes

“The best gardens are created through the art of deception, says Fox. Gardens should employ the art of the large in the small and the small in the large, providing for the real in the unreal and the unreal in the real.”
― Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road

“Enjoyment comes from wandering through a series of vistas, from noticing how bamboo shadows cast against a whitewashed wall create a scene or how latticework openings in a wall play a role in the illusion of shadow and light. The visitor is unaware and uncaring of the garden’s boundaries, barely glimpsed through pine and bamboo, obscured so that the garden appears endless…”
― Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road

“If you believed only what the stories say, you'd think we do nothing but wreak mischief.”
― Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road

“You've suffered enough for three lifetimes, Mama," I said. "You desere to go through. But I want to live at least one lifetime in this world. I'll be all right.”
― Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road

“It's easier not to love, Fox had said.
Yet Fox had loved her human friends, of this I was certain. She loved my mother, loved me. How long could anyone live, even an immortal, without giving in to love?”
― Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road

“How can you tell whether anyone is truly good or evil? I've been a Fox for hundreds of years and from what I've seen it takes generations before consequences truly run their course.”
― Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road

“If I'd taken Fox's powers, I could've lived for hundreds of years, known and loved many people. But then I would've had to watch them die of illnessor old age. How many different kinds of pain can there be? How much loss can the human heart endure?
I knew why those other foxes, once human, had wanted to die. Their hearts had remained human een though they wielded the powers of a fox. They were ready to die because they had lost too many loved ones over the centuries, because they had suffered such an accumulation of blows to the heart that all love had been beaten out of them, all joy turned to ash.
It was better to tread my own path in life as a human.”
― Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road

“Gardens should employ the art of the large int he small and the small in the arg, providing for the real in the unreal and the unreal in the real.”
― Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road

“him.”
― Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road

“I don't believe in happy endings. It's enough to feel life so intensely.”
― Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road

“To slip through crowds unseen in the daytime, then run at night beneath moonlight and clouds. To be free of the fear of hunger, the encumbrance of illness. To shape my features so that I would never again hear the taunts of zazhong. To dazzle any man and make him love me. The conquest of the unreal over the real.”
― Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road

“Not a single breath of air stirred in the light fabric at the windows. Moonlight flooded the garden with a cold radiance that slivered every leaf and glittered the gravel path. Shanghai was exciting, but it was too dense, too clamorous. Even though my little house was sheltered behind brick walls, I always sensed an undercurrent of noise, the hum of traffic from busy Avenue Joffre a few blocks away. I missed the quiet of evenings at Dragon Springs Road, when you could hear the rustle of vines as the air cooled and breezes lifted, when a restful silence descended, encouraging nocturnal creatures to venture out.”
― Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road

“Knowledge sharpens your wits.”
― Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road

“The only thing you can count on is that the gods make other plans.”
― Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road

“I want to live at least one lifetime in this world.”
― Janie Chang, Dragon Springs Road