In The Shadow Of The Banyan Quotes
"War entered my childhood world not with the blasts of rockets and bombs but with my father’s footsteps as he walked through the hallway."
"Each day before dawn, Papa would go out for a solitary stroll, and returning an hour or so later, he would bring back with him the sights and sounds of the city."
"The sun is brilliant!" she enthused, and with these easy words chased away the morning’s gravity."
"You’ll miss the Tiger’s last roar and the Rabbit’s first hop!"
"New Year was a time of cleansing, he reminded us, a time of renewal."
"A shaft of light fell on the front of the house and spilled into the open hallway from the balcony."
"Poetry is like that, Papa said. It can come to you in an intake of breath, vanish again in the blink of an eye."
"No matter what awfulness is out there," Mama cut in gently, "I know you will take care of us."
"The streets are filled with people, Aana. Homeless, hungry, desperate . . ."
"Butterflies of all colors hovered around him, as if he were a tree stalk and his straw hat a giant yellow blossom."
"We are capable of extraordinary beauty if we dare to dream."
"In time immemorial there existed a kingdom... It was as perfect a place as one could find."
"But we didn’t get very far. Again the road lining the Mekong was crammed."
"It was a gift to be able to imagine heaven, and a rebirth to actually glimpse it."
"The war is over. We’ve won. Our enemies are destroyed."
"We will decide whom you can make contact with and where you will go. If you disobey, you die."
"Knowing comes from learning, finding from seeking."
"If you pay close enough attention, Raami, you’ll realize that a single leaf can contain myriad lives imitating our own."
"Nothing stays, nothing lasts, and we who cling and desire, we are caught in an endless cycle of births and rebirths."
"Words allow us to make permanent what is essentially transient."
"Even as a lotus, endowed with beauty, fragrance, and color must fade, so must our body wither away, become nothing."
"We each must contribute our worth to the Revolution, so said the Kamaphibal."
"I felt like a kite with its string severed, drifting, drifting."
"I’ve waited for you since my bosoms were round!"
"To me, they looked like old trees that walked and talked, their rustling, noisy presence a refuge."
"The sky hung low and grey, heavy with heat and humidity, a silent, unrequited mourning."
"I knew I could not repeat it with anyone. Others would appear and disappear like fireflies; I could never know when."
"Her grief flowed out of her, spreading like Mae’s blanket, covering me with its tattered fringes and patched-up holes."
"I felt her yearning for him, missing the others, I thought maybe we mourned not only the dead but also the living."
"If I got struck by lightning, I thought, at least he would witness it. I wasn’t completely alone."
"I must grow and stretch myself as a young rice shoot would. I must rise above the mire and muck."
"Words, they are our rise and our fall, Raami."
"I felt a rift, like a fault line, that suddenly cracked open on the ground between us."
"For everything taken away, something even more special is given back."
"Love was my consolation prize, and as a child I received it in abundance from those who cared for me."
"I’d love my sister more than I had ever loved her. I would no longer allow myself to feel jealous that she was perfect while I was marred by polio."
"When you were sick with polio, your papa was with me, and I could hardly bear it, the agony of having to watch my own child suffer."
"Tetracycline. This, and my love, in all its selfless manifestations, would bring Radana back to health."
"The Revolution does not recognize private thoughts."
"Her death confused and angered me. I didn’t understand why she’d killed herself."
"But love, I know now, hides in all sorts of places, exists in the most sorrowful corner of your heart."
"But you ought to know that in you I see myself, in you I see my horrible grief."
"Even with all my lies, I couldn’t save them."
"Sadness was alive. Or maybe she’d cut it for the same reason Big Uncle had shaved his head. To mourn them."
"She was no longer bleeding, she’d told Big Uncle one night when they stayed up to talk, thinking Grandmother Queen and I were asleep."
"There are no gods, Big Uncle had responded. If they were the ones who gave life, created it, they’d know its value."
"She stood up, emptying the last bit of water from the bucket onto her feet, and for a few seconds I saw her as she’d once been, light and effervescent, like a soap bubble."
"There was to be a wedding, we were finally told. A mass wedding. But the whole atmosphere was funereal."
"Victory to our brave soldier who has sacrificed his body for the Revolution!"
"Private property is the evil of capitalism! Private property promotes greed and divides the commune!"
"I can’t let you risk your life—" "What life?" she snapped, then, as if to put his mind at ease, added, "That pig has as much to lose as we do."
"I swallowed hard and, gathering my resolve, popped a roasted grasshopper into my mouth instead—wings, legs, and all."
"I scooted to the foot of the mat and, bending down, touched my head to her feet, the way my father would’ve done."
"An orange glow lined the edge of distant forests. No one slept."
"Over the Mekong the sun rose, slowly coming into view, like another world, perfectly round and blazing red."
"A Vietnamese soldier, standing atop the roof of one of the trucks, grinning deliriously, called out in broken Khmer, "Anyone? Anyone?""
"It’s over, Raami," she said, wiping away her tears. "Now we can leave."
"East . . . where the sun blazes as red as here—Vietnam. West . . . a land of golden temples—Thailand."
"Hope had wheels like an army truck. It revved and hummed, as lively as the young Vietnamese soldier beaming at us from the driver’s seat of his vehicle."
"Hope bore us across burnt fields, bombed bridges, broken sparrow-nest hills, and scarred rubber forests."
"To my surprise, Mama stepped forward and began to translate, at first haltingly, then more fluently."
"I told you stories to give you wings, Raami, so that you would never be trapped by anything—your name, your title, the limits of your body, this world’s suffering."
"I’m the only Sisowath . . . I’d mistaken his words and deeds, his letting go, for detachment, when in fact he was seeking rebirth, his own continuation in the possibility of my survival."