The Bonesetter's Daughter Quotes
"These are the things I know are true: My name is LuLing Liu Young."
"The names of my husbands were Pan Kai Jing and Edwin Young, both of them dead and our secrets gone with them."
"I know all this, yet there is one name I cannot remember."
"Hand-talk, face-talk, and chalk-talk were the languages I grew up with, soundless and strong."
"I was a fire-eater, she said with her hands and eyes. Hundreds of people came to see me in the market square."
"Precious Auntie now told me, her hands talking fast. It's almost time for breakfast, and we must pray while we're still hungry."
"Each time I loved something with a special ache, I put it in my trunk of best things."
"For the past eight years, always starting on August twelfth, Ruth Young lost her voice."
"The air was moist and antiseptically cold against her face."
"I'm not an expert on anything. But I love language in all forms."
"Every day smile for him, show off her teeth, like monkey."
"News from the gods, I won ten million dollar!"
"No one could have loved her more. Better perhaps, but not more."
"Now they demanded them as culturally sensitive."
"She kept junk mail and coupons, as if they were personal greeting cards."
"And Ruth knew she should be outraged, maybe even humiliated, but in fact, she was relieved."
"A person should consider how things begin. A particular beginning results in a particular end."
"Work hard all day making ink, look young at night while you sleep."
"A daughter should have no secrets from a mother."
"A person needs to smell that only once to know what it is."
"My hair is as black as the burnt shell of a horse chestnut and my face as wrinkly white as the meat inside."
"Better than having white hair and a burnt face."
"It's the chemistry that gets you pregnant. Love is one of the ingredients."
"You think you're so hot! How many others have you screwed?"
"I hope you one day do a better job teaching your kids about the facts of life."
"You're just a little girl, you don't even have any titties yet."
"This is because you're always bothering him. You think he wants to play with you—he doesn't!"
"These are the things I should not forget."
"My mare was so crazy with fright I thought she was going to gallop straight to the underworld with me stuck astride."
"He looked like a poor scholar who could rise above his circumstances."
"You speak the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset."
"The girl would ride his back and peck him apart piece by piece."
"But even with this, don't marry in the Dragon Year. Bad year for a Horse."
"You think you can scare a person into being sorry?"
"I want to hear the language of shooting stars."
"She sensed danger, but she could not name what it was."
"I don't want to hear any more of her crazy stories."
"In the year 1929, my fourteenth year, I became an evil person."
"Those folks with life-draining ailments could no longer be cured."
"You think you can keep me here only so you won't lose your position as nursemaid?"
"Precious Auntie said I was the dog who betrayed her."
"I was the daughter of Precious Auntie, a woman who also could not control her desires."
"Want less, regret less, that was Mother's motto."
"We can study, we can learn, we can marry whom we choose. We can work, we can earn, and bad fate is all we lose."
"A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin."
"You are beauty, we are beauty, we are divine, unchanged by time."
"Every stroke had meaning, and since every word had many strokes, it also had many meanings."
"It's not the way of heaven. There is no reason."
"This is beauty, and this is beauty, and you are beauty, and love is beauty and we are beauty."
"And yet it is simpler, with less emphasis on the stalk and more on the leaves."
"The only curses are worries you can't get rid of."
"Why should those who suffer also be quiet? Why accept fate?"
"We are going to market to sell our eggs."
"I showed her my thermos of 'Japanese chase-away juice.' And then I began to laugh and couldn't stop."
"But then I reasoned that if a person wants to strike back, she must be close to the person who must be struck down."
"Teacher Pan was the one who suggested we make quick-use ink."
"The fortune-teller GaoLing chose could write three different words at one time with three different brushes held in one hand."
"It clearly said all hope is lost about his returning home."
"This is our family's ink shop. I'm not walking away from it. The war is over, and now I'm ready to fight back."
"Forever in my nose, that is the fragrance of Fragrant Harbor."
"I'm also sorry to tell you that Miss Grutoff died a week after we arrived."
"How are you? Not bad, she said, cheerful and smiling."
"I sailed for America, a land without curses or ghosts."
"You can't take it anymore, you just bring her here. Part-time my place, part-time your place. Easier that way."
"I won't make any decision until you think it's the right thing."
"Later he died, maybe in 1960, though no one is sure-for-sure."
"How could I tell him that I was still married?"
"Her too. But your Chinese name comes from Sister Yu. Yu Luyi. Luyi, it means 'all that you wish.'"
"Each year we invite her to go to Hawaii. Each year she tells me she doesn't have the money."
"The people also confiscated his house, made his wife sweep the streets."
"So we knew to tell the stockbroker what to buy and sell."
"When I heard my first husband was probably dead, it was too late to go back and explain."
"I don't know her title, something to do with good attitude and reforms."
"By now, he must be dead. So sad. We once were like family."
"I'm like those kids who live with gunfire going off around them."
"I don't want pain. I don't want to die. I don't want to see other people around me die."
"It's confusing why. People think the broom star is very bad to see."
"That's why we use that expression 'It's in your bones.' It means, 'That's your character.'"
"What is the past but what we choose to remember?"