377 Quotes by Celeste Ng

He can guess, but he won't ever know, not really. What it was like, what she was thinking, everything she'd never told him.

She had been brought up to follow rules, to believe that the proper functioning of the world depended upon her compliance, and follow them—and believe—she did.

All her life, she had learned that passion, like fire, was a dangerous thing...It scaled walls and jumped over trenches. Sparks leapt like fleas and spread as rapidly; a breeze could carry embers for miles.

Like small animals sheltered deep in their den

He didn't know what exactly he wanted to say—I'm sorry, I didn't mean it—only the ever-deepening regret at how things were turning out between them, the desperate and impossible desire to go back to the way things had been.

I stället ställde hon den fråga som flöt under alla de andra frågorna som en djup underjordisk flod. »Var jag önskad?«

To a parent, your child wasn't just a person: your child was a *place*, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all existed at once. 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.

Quando Pearl gli chiese cosa facessero i genitori tutto il giorno, Moody si strinse nelle spalle. «Be’, vanno a lavorare». A lavorare! Quando lo diceva sua madre suonava come una sfacchinata: servire ai tavoli, lavare i piatti, pulire i pavimenti. Dai Richardson quella parola aveva un che di nobile: facevano cose importanti.

He can't know what it was like, not the first time, not the last. He can guess, but he won't ever know, not really. What it was like, what she was thinking, everything she'd never told him. Whether she thought he'd failed her, or whether she wanted him to let her go. This, more than anything, makes him feel that she is gone.