“As she spoke, I wanted to cry, because sometimes it's just so damn hard to be a mother. We have to wait and wait and wait for our children to open their hearts to us. And if that doesn't work, we have to bide our time and look for the moment of weakness when we can sneak back into their lives and they will see us and remember us for the people who love them unconditionally.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“Seeing something once is better than hearing about it a hundred times. Doing something once is better than seeing it a hundred times.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“A brave heart? It feels like a swollen and aching thing in my chest.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“My mother used to tell me that Heaven never seals off all exits.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“I came here to be happy, and I’m going to be happy. If I smile, then maybe I can convince my body just how happy I am.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“Miracles are everywhere, and as I watch my sister--forever, beautiful, forever my little sister--staring into the eyes of the one man she ever loved, I know that indeed things do return to the beginning. The world opens again, and I see a life of happiness without fear. I gaze at my family--complicated though it may be--and know that fate smiles on us.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“Model communes are the ones where the leaders lie the best and the biggest.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“It’s fair to say I don’t know what I’m doing. I like to plot my life and proceed carefully, but life doesn’t always follow a plan.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“No matter what you’re feeling or how desperate you become, always take a moral position. If you do that, God will watch over you.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“Maybe stories and memories are destined to be incomplete...”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“When you lose your home country, what do you preserve and what do you abandon?”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“spring comes, flowers fragrant, bird sings.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“The realization that truth, forgiveness, and goodness are more important than revenge, condemnation, and cruelty gives me courage and certainty.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“The lotus symbolizes purity, because it rises out of the mud but looks pristine.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“La felicità nasce dalla sofferenza, è questo ho intuito.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“winter gone, mountains clear, water sparkles.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“People are shaped by the earth and water around them.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“Tuhan memang menciptakan perempuan, namun Dia lupa menciptakan kebahagiaan.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“Waves of heat shimmy off the tarmac, and the air is stiflingly hot, with humidity that’s even worse”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“I thought I could use idealism to solve my inner conflicts, but in healing my inner conflicts I destroyed my idealism.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“To make an ox or water buffalo work so hard, it needs to be blinded and uninformed. That’s what the government is doing to the masses now.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“La felicità nasce dalla sofferenza, è questo che ho intuito.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“Non vi è ferita più profonda o dolorosa di quella inferta da coloro che sostengono di amarti di più.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
“BE KIND AND BENEVOLENT. MAKE A CASUAL STOP ON THE ENDLESS WAY TO THE FUTURE. and PUT ALL TROUBLES FROM YOUR MIND.”
― Lisa See, quote from Dreams of Joy
Lisa See
Born place: Paris, France
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“Howard had a pine display case, fastened by fake leather straps and stained to look like walnut. Inside, on fake velvet, were cheap gold-plated earrings and pendants of semiprecious stones. He opened this case for haggard country wives when their husbands were off chopping trees or reaping the back acres. He showed them the same half-dozen pieces every year the last time he came around, when he thought, This is the season - preserving done, woodpile high, north wind up and getting cold, night showing up earlier every day, dark and ice pressing down from the north, down on the raw wood of their cabins, on the rough-cut rafters that sag and sometimes snap from the weight of the dark and the ice, burying families in their sleep, the dark and the ice and sometimes the red in the sky through trees: the heartbreak of a cold sun. He thought, Buy the pendant, sneak it into your hand from the folds of your dress and let the low light of the fire lap at it late at night as you wait for the roof to give out or your will to snap and the ice to be too thick to chop through with the ax as you stand in your husband's boots on the frozen lake at midnight, the dry hack of the blade on ice so tiny under the wheeling and frozen stars, the soundproof lid of heaven, that your husband would never stir from his sleep in the cabin across the ice, would never hear and come running, half-frozen, in only his union suit, to save you from chopping a hole in the ice and sliding into it as if it were a blue vein, sliding down into the black, silty bottom of the lake, where you would see nothing, would perhaps feel only the stir of some somnolent fish in the murk as the plunge of you in your wool dress and the big boots disturbed it from its sluggish winter dreams of ancient seas. Maybe you would not even feel that, as you struggled in clothes that felt like cooling tar, and as you slowed, calmed, even, and opened your eyes and looked for a pulse of silver, an imbrication of scales, and as you closed your eyes again and felt their lids turn to slippery, ichthyic skin, the blood behind them suddenly cold, and as you found yourself not caring, wanting, finally, to rest, finally wanting nothing more than the sudden, new, simple hum threading between your eyes. The ice is far too thick to chop through. You will never do it. You could never do it. So buy the gold, warm it with your skin, slip it onto your lap when you are sitting by the fire and all you will otherwise have to look at is your splintery husband gumming chew or the craquelure of your own chapped hands.”
― Paul Harding, quote from Tinkers
“So I might have to marry Alec when I'm grown," Illia was prattling across to Seregil. "I hope that won't hurt your feelings too much."
Seregil slapped a hand over his heart like a troubadour in a mural. "Ah, fair maiden, I shall slay a thousand evil dragons for you, and lay their steaming black livers at your dainty feet, if only you will restore me to your favor."
"Livers!" Illia buried her face against Alec's shoulder with an outraged giggle.
"You wouldn't bring me livers, would you, Alec?"
"Of course not," Alec scoffed. "What a disgusting present. I'd bring you the eyeballs for a necklace, and all their scaly pointed tongues to tie your braids with.”
― quote from Stalking Darkness
“Either grant me the bliss of the ignorant or give me the strength to bear the knowledge.”
― Elif Shafak, quote from The Bastard of Istanbul
“In Mesoamerica, timekeeping provided the stimulus that accounting gave to the Middle East. Like contemporary astrologers, the Olmec, Maya, and Zapotec believed that celestial phenomena like the phases of the moon and Venus affect daily life. To measure and predict these portents requires careful sky watching and a calendar. Strikingly, Mesoamerican societies developed three calendars: a 365-day secular calendar like the contemporary calendar; a 260-day sacred calendar that was like no other calendar on earth; and the equally unique Long Count, a one-by-one tally of the days since a fixed starting point thousands of years ago.”
― Charles C. Mann, quote from 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
“The less you take from the land, the less you owe in return.”
― Marlo Morgan, quote from Mutant Message Down Under
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