23 Quotes by Ling Ma

Whenever she’d get mad, she’d take her index finger out and poke me in the forehead. You you you you you, she ‘d say, as if accusing me of being me. She was quick to blame me for the slightest infractions, a spilled glass, a way of sitting while eating, my future ambitions (farmer or teacher), the way I dressed, what I ate, even the way I practiced English words in the car (Thank you! I yelled. Scissors! I screamed). Pg 184

Only in America do you have the luxury of being depressed.

The first place you live alone, away from your family, he said, is the first place you become a person, the first place you become yourself.

If you’re lucky enough to find something you’re good at, where people appreciate you, don’t thumb your nose at it. If it’s an issue of salary or benefits, I’m open to discussing it. Pg 275

Who knew what was true. The sheer density of information and misinformation at the End, encapsulated in news articles and message-board theories and clickbait traps that had propagated hysterically through retweets and shares, had effectively rendered us more ignorant, more helpless, more innocent in our stupidity.

Just because you're adequately good at something doesn't mean that's what you should do.

if you are an individual employed by a corporation or an institution, he said, then the odds are leveraged against you. The larger party always wins. It can't see you, but it can crush you. And if that's the working world, then I don't want to be a part of it.

If the walls weren't made of glass, I would have lain down on it to see how it felt. Maybe that's what he did. Maybe that's what power would feel like, napping publicly while everyone in the office scurries on with their tasks around you.

You have to know that I'm leaving because of New York, not you. You know why I don't want to live here. I don't want to hustle 24/7 just to make rent.