We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies Quotes

“I’ve come to recognize this as something of a local custom—to express enthusiasm and agreement without real interest. A kind of polite but unyielding distance that saturates so many interactions. But now, their raised eyebrows and tight-lipped smiles fill me with a new sadness, clarifying where I stand in their eyes. Theirs isn’t the gaze of a mentor upon a student but a fixed asymmetry. They look at me as though I am a child whom they can tolerate at the table as long as I know my place. For years, I’ve sensed this violent but hidden truth—that beyond the welcome smiles of this country lies a vast and impenetrable wall: a national self-regard that insists on a mythic goodness. This is a nation that gives and gives to the less fortunate and asks nothing in return. Nothing, that is, but our grateful acquiescence to their silent expectations.”
― Tsering Yangzom Lama, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies

“They will not be satisfied with our land alone. They want to possess our minds.”
― Tsering Yangzom Lama, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies

“What I do know is that survival is an ugly game, and our objects are all the world really values of our people. Our objects and our ideas. But not us, and not our lives. Whether we’re here for another two hundred years or wiped off the face of the planet, it doesn’t matter to anyone else, not really.”
― Tsering Yangzom Lama, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies

“We are asylees. We are refugees. The Chinese government took our land and killed our people, 1.2 million souls. Our documents are flimsy—just laminated scraps of common paper, not embossed leather passports like yours—and considered illegitimate by most nations. Please overlook our present degradation. You should have seen us before the invasion, when our country had kings and gods and an unbroken thread of history from a time before time.”
― Tsering Yangzom Lama, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies

“Perhaps it is a good thing, the right thing, that Horowitz doesn’t understand the people of my camp, for this is a man who treats knowledge as acquisition, understanding as control.”
― Tsering Yangzom Lama, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies

“This man doesn’t understand anything outside his own terms. Power, survival, domination—these are the bricks of his mind.”
― Tsering Yangzom Lama, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies

“…these people are always inventing new problems just to make up for their good fortune.”
― Tsering Yangzom Lama, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies

“Well, there’s no denying that Chinese rule is problematic in certain senses, but we have to be realistic about the past as well. Do these stories of a peaceful, humane, independent Tibet help the cause? There’s no denying that many monasteries extracted heavy taxes.”

“This justifies a violent occupation?”
― Tsering Yangzom Lama, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies

“There’s no need to get upset,’ says Horowitz, his voice deepening. ‘I can express a view that you disagree with and vice versa.’

‘But you are an expert speaking about a colonized country. Can’t you see how much power you have to shape the discourse? Much more than any Tibetan. To the academy, to the wider public outside my community, you are seen as the objective, enlightened arbiter of truth.”
― Tsering Yangzom Lama, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies