377 Quotes by Celeste Ng

Everything, she had come to understand, was something like infinity.

You never got what you wanted; you just learned to get by without it.

Getting information out of interviewees is sometimes like walking a large, reluctant cow: you have to turn the cow onto the right path while letting the cow believe it’s doing the steering.

Most communities just happen; the best are planned.

Lydia has never really had friends, but their parents have never known.

You can’t just do what you want, she thought. Why should Mia get to, when no one else did?

It was a place you could take refuge, if you knew how to get in. And each time you left it, each time your child passed out of your sight, you feared you might never be able to return to that place again.

You could see it every time you looked at her: layered in her face was the baby she’d been and the child she’d become and the adult she would grow up to be, and you saw them all simultaneously, like a 3-D image. It made your head spin. It was a place you could take refuge, if you knew how to get in. And each time you left it, each time your child passed out of your sight, you feared you might never be able to return to that place again.

Pearl was smarter than any of them and yet she seemed comfortable with everything she didn’t know: she lingered comfortably in the gray spaces.