Four Treasures Of The Sky Quotes
"When I am kidnapped, it does not happen in an alleyway. It does not happen in the middle of the night. It does not happen when I am alone."
"This money should be saved, not wasted on some limp fish."
"Hunger presses against the walls of my stomach."
"No, dear Daiyu, they named you after a poet."
"My mother saw to it that every design, be it phoenix, crane, or chrysanthemum, leapt off the fabric."
"Standing beneath the gulls and swifts and terns, I only felt myself, one who held nothing, carried nothing, and offered nothing."
"The village could disappear and our house could blow away, but if I had my mother, my father, and my grandmother, I knew that I would be able to do anything."
"Your name means wind, he said. And I expect you to move like the wind—no laziness, no uncertainty."
"I, in English, to represent the self. Love 愛, in Chinese, a heart to be given away."
"The only thing that has changed is a small scar under his right eye. If I saw him on the street, I think, would I follow him all over again?"
"Whoever created Jasper’s eyes knew to leave a hint behind, something you had to squint to see."
"You think you will be young and beautiful forever, I hiss. One day, men will not even look at you. What then? You will be in the cribs or out on the street, and then you will die!"
I have been here since I was six," she says. "You learn early on how to stand things.
"I realized long ago that this would be my fate. If I were to run away with you, what could I do? How do I contribute? This life is all I have ever known."
"Practice does make me calm. In my tracing, I find my mind wandering further away from those visions of failure and despair."
"I could outwit a tiger if I needed to. I could ride on the back of an eagle and make him lose the way home."
"No man wants to sleep with a slovenly pig, do you agree?"
"He said that you refused one of his requests. Do you know what I am speaking of?"
"You disobey a customer, you disobey me." - Madam Lee
"In this future, I am whole and content and well."
"You should have stayed inside." - Nelson Wong
"But no one else is laughing, especially not Nelson."
"It is not bad to have friends, Nam says. You do not want to grow old like me, with only Lum to die with. You want family."
"At night, I trace his name on my thigh. Nelson. In Chinese, Ni Er Sen."
"Three trees, one forest. Nelson, like a forest, must contain plenty."
"Time will tell, Lin Daiyu promises me. The musician’s hands will never lie."
"He cannot be all that bad if he plays the qin, she tells me. I play, too, and I am not all that bad."
"The burning returns, but this time it is gentle, like the afternoon sun settling itself into my skin."
"Peach blossoms, pink silk bursting into spring. Fair is the maiden who is asked to sing."
"This is how you become a man, Jacob, he says."
"I like the way the sun feels on my head, a quiet heat holding my scalp."
"Perhaps we should not try, I tell him. Some things are better left as they were intended to be."
"What are you thinking about? he says. Not asleep after all."
"It was just fine, Lin Daiyu mutters, crawling back into the fireplace."
"Everyone has their tragic story, I say, hoping I sound like a man."
"That does not mean they should have to suffer, he says softly, sitting up."
"You are a lot more than you give yourself credit for, Jacob Li."
"I realize that I want him the way I wanted the fish: badly, and with abandon."
"This is the joy of not having to worry about anything."
"You are a girl pretending to be a man, carrying around a ghost. He would never love someone like you."
"The people who live here now did not always. This land was stolen, and that stealing has become a sport."
"Because I am going with William to California, I hear myself saying. I am going to find the Chinese Six Companies and ask them to send me home."
"Funny, how even after all the things I have experienced, this should be the thing that hurts most."
"How can you call me selfish? I ask, knowing my words will take us somewhere we may never come back from."
"A resilient brush is one that, after depositing ink on paper, can spring back up in preparation for the next stroke."
"This sorrow will not last forever, I tell myself."
"Your intentions were good, she said, but your actions betrayed you."
"I am not afraid of death. I am afraid of no longer living."
"If your intentions and your actions always matched, I would never need proof."
"I would have to outrun them all and get down to the others before they could reach me. Could I kill two or three as I ran? Could I kill anyone at all?"
"This land was stolen, and that stealing has become a sport."
"In that moment, I need for Nelson to look at me with anything other than what is on his face, which is pity, which is disappointment."
"The silence that follows could sink me."
"If the world were so easily divided into those who were white and those who were not, then no one was exempt from that."
"I do not ask him to love me. All I need is for him to be well."
"Resilience is simple, really. Know when to push and when to let go."
"A line can only be called strong when it has the conviction to stay on paper."
"Two nights before my departure for Boise, a storm rolls through."
"There was a time when, bent inside the coal bucket and soaked in my own urine, I imagined revenge against Jasper."
"The last answer in William’s letter, another one I did not expect to hear: Madam Lee no longer works at the brothel."
"The inkstone asks for destruction before creation—you must first destroy yourself, grind yourself into a paste, before becoming a work of art."
"You have been brought here to answer for the horrific crime you committed."
"I want to tear through my bindings, fell the tree upon which I am strapped, raze the forest."
"You have been brought here, Teddy begins, but I am no longer listening."