377 Quotes by Celeste Ng

Her preferred form of exercise, she told Wendy, was stress. "Clench muscles, hold for twelve hours, release for a count of five, then clench again

It struck her then, as if someone had said it aloud: her mother was dead, and the only thing worth remembering about her, in the end, was that she had cooked. Marilyn thought uneasily of her own life, of hours spent making breakfasts, serving dinners, packing lunches into neat paper bags. How was it possible to spend so many hours spreading peanut butter across bread?

How suffocating to be so loved

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.

We’re committed, as she gets older, to teaching her about her birth culture. And of course she already loves the rice. Actually, it was her first solid food.

Was she the bird trying to batter its way free, or was she the cage?

What would she have done if she’d been in that situation? Mrs. Richardson would ask herself this question over and over, before Michael’s call and for weeks—and months—after. Each time, faced with this impossible choice, she came to the same conclusion. I would never have let myself get into that situation, she told herself. I would have made better choices along the way.

More insidious than those moments of outright hostility, though, and maybe more powerful, are the constant, low-level reminders that you're different. Many of us feel different in some way, but it's really jarring when one of your differences is obvious at a glance—other people can tell you're different simply by looking at you . . . Even when you feel like you belong, other people's reactions—even stares and offhand remarks—can make you feel that you don't, startlingly often.

I mean, that’s the future, isn’t it? In the future we’ll all be able to look past race.