The Porcelain Moon Quotes

“It was far better to feel nothing but emptiness. Why had no one warned her that emptiness could be so heavy?”
― Janie Chang, The Porcelain Moon

“How often do you wake from a dream so vivid that for the first few minutes the dream is more real than your waking?”
― Janie Chang, The Porcelain Moon

“. . . he had faith China would one day regain her place as a great nation, as great as it had been during the Han, the Tang, or the Ming dynasties. It might take a hundred years, but what was a hundred years compared to four thousand years of civilization?”
― Janie Chang, The Porcelain Moon

“Sometimes mercy is merely the absence of pain.”
― Janie Chang, The Porcelain Moon

“Spoils of war.' Why does no one understand the ugliness, the brutality of those words?”
― Janie Chang, The Porcelain Moon

“When Auguste's troop was dispatched to rescue European civilians and soldiers inside the International Legations, under attack by Chinese Boxers and the Imperial Chinese Army, he had been told they would be fighting barbarians. But everything he saw, the architecture and gardens, the exquisite craftsmanship, the private libraries, told him otherwise. They were plundering a civilized society. One whose emperors had refused to allow in new ideas and new inventions for hundreds of years. A country unable to stand against Western firepower and Western alliances.”
― Janie Chang, The Porcelain Moon

“Henri had entered her life like a pebble thrown into a pond. That was how Pauline thought of it, the ripples of his presence inciting new thoughts, feelings and events into motion.”
― Janie Chang, The Porcelain Moon

“Let me tell you a secret. Being loved by your grandfather did me no good at all. He left us penniless. Yet the sight of him every morning made me happy because I loved him. Loving is what makes you happy, not being loved.”
― Janie Chang, The Porcelain Moon

“Grief, Camille was learning, wasn’t a pure and specific emotion. Her sorrow over Grand-mère mingled with a sense of release. She had loved her grandmother dearly, but still—and she berated herself for such thoughts crossing her mind—her grandmother had been a difficult and deeply unhappy person.”
― Janie Chang, The Porcelain Moon