12 Quotes by Leslie T. Chang

Workers were required to stay six months, and even then permission to quit was not always granted. The factory held the first two months of every worker's pay; leaving without approval meant losing that money and starting over somewhere else. That was a fact of factory life you couldn't know from the outside: Getting into a factory was easy. The hard part was getting out.

The past has been there all along, reminding us: This time--maybe, hopefully, against all odds, we will get it right.

A person cannot grow up through happiness. Happiness makes a person shallow. It is only through suffering that we grow up, transform, and come to a better understanding of life.

The past has been there all along, reminding us: This time – maybe, hopefully, against all odds, we will get it right.

Chinese workers are not forced into factories because of our insatiable desire for iPods. They choose to leave their homes in order to earn money, to learn new skills and to see the world.

In China, people from such humble backgrounds rarely spoke in public. But here they were, each person unapologetic and full of faith that her personal story was interesting.

If I only go to school, come out and do migrant work for a few years, then go home, marry and have children,” Min said, “I might as well not have lived this whole life.

I would like a child to grow up to have a happy life and make a contribution to society. I don’t mean to be a big scientist or something like that. How many people can do that? I think if you live a happy life and are a good person, that is a contribution to society.

Just because a person spends her time making a piece of something does not mean that she becomes that – a piece of something.