377 Quotes by Celeste Ng

Qualcosa in quello scambio di sguardi tra madre e figlia aveva acciuffato il cuore di Mrs Richardson come un retino per farfalle.

She could not, she had thought as she bent to kiss the baby's flushed cheek, have loved this child more if it had come from her own flesh.

She'll pause over a peppermint, still twisted in cellophane, and wonder if it's significant, if it had meant something to Lydia, if it was just overlooked and discarded. She knows she'll find no answers. For now, she watches the figure in the bed, and her eyes fill with tears. It's enough.

Do you want me to leave?'Lexie shook her head. 'Stay,' she said. 'It's fine. I'm fine. Just stay.'After a moment, Izzy slid a square piece of paper across the table, and Lexie took it and began to follow her sister's lead: folding over, back, to the center, out, until at last she took hold of the corners and pulled and a crane bloomed like a pale flower in her hands.

The problem with rules, he reflected, was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the times there were simply "ways", none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on. He had always admired his wife's idealism, her belief that the world could be made better, could be made orderly, could perhaps even be made perfect. For the first time, he wondered if the same held true for him

A part of her wanted to stay home, to simply be with her children, but her mother had always scorned woman who didn't work. "Wasting their potential," she had sniffed. "You've got a good brain, Elena. You're not going to sit at home and knit, are you?" A modern woman, she always implied, was capable - nay, required - to have it all.

If a soul could leave the body, she thought, this is the sound it would make: like the screech of a nail being pulled from old wood.

Anger is fear's bodygurad.

Asian men could be socially inept and incompetent and ridiculous, like a Long Duk Dong, or at best unthreatening and slightly buffoonish, like a Jackie Chan. They were not allowed to be angry and articulate and powerful. And possibly right, Mr. Richardson thought uneasily.