White Ivy Quotes
"Maybe that was the problem. No one ever suspected—and that made her reckless."
"Because of those cheeks, at fourteen years old, she was often mistaken for an elementary school student—an unfortunate hindrance in everything except thieving, in which her childlike looks were a useful camouflage."
"So how exactly had this unassuming, big-eyed girl come to thieving? In the same way water trickles into even the tiniest cracks between boulders, her personality had formed into crooked shapes around the hard structure of her Chinese upbringing."
"Let this be your first lesson: give with one hand and take with the other. No one will be watching both."
"She learned English easily—indeed, she could not remember a time she had not understood English—and became a precocious reader."
"The only person who taught her any practical skills was Meifeng. Ivy’s beloved grandmother finally received her US green card when Ivy turned seven."
"Her parents’ mantra: The harder you work, the luckier you are."
"Her teachers’ mantra: Treat others the way you want to be treated."
"They don’t ai shi their things. Nothing is valuable to them."
"Walking among them but not one of them, Ivy felt a queer, dissociative sensation, not unlike being submerged in a bathtub, where everything felt both expansive and compressed."
"Good medicine tastes bad. Stop pretending you’re some tragic actress in a play."
"She would be reborn. High school was a big place. In September, she would turn up the collar of her shirt, try out for cheerleading or lacrosse, wear her hair in a French braid with a ribbon, crisp and sweet-smelling, like autumn leaves."
"It was what I’ve always told you. One successful marriage can feed three generations."
"She had long ago realized that the truth wasn’t important, it was the appearance of things that would serve her."
"A girl’s most important beauty area is her skin."
"Don’t expect too much from life. If you go looking, you’ll always find people who are better than you."
"What’s the purpose of making money if not to spend it?"
"Be humble and grateful for what you have."
"She thought: I’ll always carry my wealth on my body, not in my wallet."
"You’re already dead. You died with that boyfriend of yours back in China. We’re just your replacement family."
"How dinky it looked, like a cheap toy even Austin wouldn’t want."
"I’ve never opened up to anyone the way I opened up to you."
"This was Meifeng’s China, the one she had sold her daughter to escape."
"I want to become a lady with so much complacent wealth that others would look upon her and think, 'What a sheltered girl, that Ivy Lin. She’s probably never lifted a finger for anything in all her life.'"
"I longed for a refined boyfriend, one who spoke French, who’d lived in Europe, who read poetry, or—better yet—who wrote poetry, or composed song lyrics at the very least, one who would reveal beauty in hidden places and show her a new way of being in the world."
"Maybe passion, Ivy thought dreamily, could only bloom in illicit places."
"Her heart beat quickly; she pressed a hand to her eyes. Everything’s different now."
"The longer I wait, the more my stock goes up."
"With a best friend like you, Ivy thought, who needs enemies?"
"Sometimes I wish I could bottle up the way you look at me."
"Meifeng always said that everyone had a great future in their past."
"If only they weren’t so underpaid and overworked."
"Magic, she’d realized then, was not inherent to a place, it emanated from the person viewing it."
"Beauty is the wisdom of women; wisdom is the beauty of men."
"Other people had a sense of themselves in the larger context of some objective world."
"You’re such a duck. Mom’s looked the other way since I snuck Tucker McDermott through my window in tenth grade."
"Either Sylvia’s lying or Poppy does mind, but Sylvia doesn’t care about her mother’s feelings while Gideon is more considerate."
"What a proper upbringing you must have had. No wonder Giddy loves you."
"I’ve wanted to ask you something all week."
"Do you really think these people care about you? They care more about the stray cat. They just want you to clap, monkey, clap."
"You sure work fast. Got Gideon locked down. Good for you."
"Why do you never listen to me? Why does no one listen?"
"This is dragging on. Why don’t you two go home and think—"
"Desire, Ivy knew, was the strongest form of leverage."
"That sheer repetition of superficial interactions could breed intimacy, in a different but no less meaningful way than did deep vulnerability, was a lesson the genteel had learned early."
"Her head swiveled around the Speyers’ living room until Poppy said, 'Ivy, would your family like a tour?'"
"All judgments of attractiveness became irrelevant, reduced to shapes and curves and lines; it was like looking at the face of a farm animal, utterly deprived of meaning."
"Anyone can lash out from anger. But it takes a special kind of man to gently declare to his fiancée: 'I like everything about you,' and devote his life to upholding the principle."
"Never does a woman lie in a more cunning way than when she tells the truth to a man who doesn’t believe her."
"The mouth could lie but the body never lied."
"People like Roux and Nan thought love was speaking your mind—in the most forceful, unrestrained manner, the more unrestrained, the more loving—but Ivy had been with Gideon long enough to understand how delicate silence and restraint, that careful distillation of one’s most unseemly thoughts, was the most loving and respectful gesture one could make toward one’s spouse."
"She tried to speak, but she only took shallow inhales."
"But the unexpected directness of Gideon’s question had completely rattled her."
"I’m not going to retake the LSAT. I don’t want to be a lawyer."
"Honestly, no one’s really asked me that before."
"What’s wrong with you? We’re all in this hellhole together."
"Lives are like rivers. Eventually they go where they must, not where we want them to go."
"I admit—I was disapproving at first when I heard you weren’t marrying a Chinese man."
"People could almost always adapt to chronic pain."
"The anguish came all at once, hot and suffocating."
"The shadowy figure she’d sensed between them hadn’t been Roux but Tom. It’d always been Tom."
"Breadcrumbs become obvious when one sees through the eyes of a bird."
"She would never again lower herself under anyone else’s thumb."
"It was a look of peace, that elusive feeling she’d sought, that they’d sought together."