6 Quotes by Larissa Lai

One must take human form to engage in human affairs. It was difficult.

I want to be firm that the idea of the traditional itself is highly constructed and highly ideological. This version is one among many. There is no original, only endless multiple trails that point into the past. We can never grasp that past. These stories are always about the present.

We all know that joy and sorrow are entirely matters of fate and have nothing whatsoever to do with planning.

What is the value of human life? We are made up of so much water.

How easily we abandon those who have suffered the same persecutions as we have. How quickly we grow impatient with their inability to transcend the conditions of our lives.

This story is about stink, after all, a story about rot, about how life grows out of the most fetid-smelling places. I leaned into the wall of the coiled cabin, snail, the body curled in upon itself, spine coiled, a snake lying in wait.