377 Quotes by Celeste Ng

Like small animals sheltered deep in their den.

Everything Mrs. Richardson had put out of her mind from the hospital stay – everything she thought she’d forgotten – her body remembered on a cellular level: the rush of anxiety, the fear that permeated her thoughts of Izzy. The microscopic focus on each thing Izzy did, turning it this way and that, scrutinizing it for signs of weakness or disaster.

All their lives Nath had understood, better than anyone, the lexicon of their family, the things they could never truly explain to outsiders: that a book or a dress meant more than something to read or something to wear; that attention came with expectations that – like snow – drifted and settled and crushed you with their weight. All the words were right, but in this new Nath’s voice, they sounded trivial and brittle and hollow. The way anyone else might have heard them. Already her brother had become a stranger.

James slid into his seat and the girl next to him asked, “What’s wrong with your eyes?” It wasn’t until he heard the horror in the teacher’s voice – “Shirley Byron!” – that he realized he was supposed to be embarrassed; the next time it happened, he had learned his lesson and turned red right away.

Part of the process,” Pearl informed him as they cut through the living room, with the nonchalant air of a native unfazed by the curious customs of the land.

She had felt, finally, as if she could speak without immediately bumping into the hard shell of her sheltered life, as if she suddenly saw that the solid walls penning her in were actually bars, with spaces between them wide enough to slip through.

Being allowed to do something and knowing how to do it are not the same thing.

Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet. 1977, May 3, six thirty in the morning, no one knows anything but this innocuous fact: Lydia is late for breakfast.

He felt as if he’d dived into a deep, clear lake and discovered it was a shallow, knee-deep pond. What did you do? Well, you stood up. You rinsed your mud-caked knees and pulled your feet out of the muck. And you were more cautious after that. You knew, from then on, that the world was a smaller place than you’d expected.