“The moon in all her immaculate purity hung in the sky, laughing at this world of dust. She congratulated me for my carefully considered maneuvers and invited me to share in her eternal solitude.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“Endless moons, an opaque universe, thunder, tornadoes, the quaking earth. Rare moments of peace; forehead up against my knees, arms around my head, I though, I listened, I longed not to exist. but life was there, a transparent pearl, a star revolving slowly on its own axis.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“I envied these women I saw before me, their beauty still intact. Life has its revenge of life. Untimely death is the secret of eternal youth.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“To other women the choice of clothes was a form of ingenious exhibition, a shameless seduction. To me, dresses were like a breastplate that I put on to set off to war against this life.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“I succeeded in using my charms like a weapon; I learned to play with other's hearts and to master my own desires.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“would you dare to love me?”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“I had lost some of my naivete and gained strength. These women with their pointless scheming could not contain me, and I watched the volatile world of the gynaeceum with a detached eye. The Forbidden City had buried my youth, and in the monastery, I had died and come back to life. Friends, enemies and mistresses had all disappeared. I was a ghost from a lost world, still going from one season to the next and still living for one man alone.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“In the closed world of the gynaeceum, despite the gardens and parkland extending beyong the horizon, despite the insurmountable walls separating pavillions and palaces, the tangled web of our fate was inescapable. Why did these women love each other to the point of madness? Why did they loathe one another so vehemently, and why did sworn enemies feel such horror and fascination for one another? Why should furious hate become obsession, then intoxication and the very reason to live?
Because love and hate were the two heads of the demon.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“In our time women can demonstrate prowess in a thousand ways. Long ago the great Princess Sun of Ping fought for her father, the August Sovereign. At her funeral, His Majesty called for the trumpets and drums to be sounded, an honor reserved for men. My dear, from this day you must dress her as a boy. Give her an education worthy of her own determination.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“She died a few days later, and her death buried once and for all the intrigues between the Precious Wife, the Gracious Wife, and all the Imperial favorites. Rivalries and alliances, loathing and attraction had been dissolved. Their existence had been a pointless tragedy, just as the talent of one prodigious poetess had been.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“Men’s strengths go hand in hand with their weaknesses. That is why there is no such thing as an invincible warrior, and why heroes die.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“Men's freedom is their unfaithfulness: the Son of Heaven or the son of a peasant, they could both reduce me to the mediocre torments of a woman.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“A man who does not like power will suffer from its cruelty.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“A great emptiness had been carved out of my soul; I watched all the effervescence of the world with a derisive smile.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“S Novom je godinom započeo novi kozmički ciklus. Neka noćne more iz prošlosti zauvijek nestanu!”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“Obješen na nebu, Mjesec netaknute čistoće nije se brinuo za ovaj svijet prašine.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“My position at the Palace is our one opportunity. Have confidence in my destiny. Do not weep.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“A man who does not like power will suffer from its cruelty. He would be unable to raise his hand in punishment or to untangle the web woven by good and evil.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“The role of Empress became a full-time occupation.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
“I held in my hand an invisible sword that sliced through every illusion. The sharpness of the blade gave me its icy and dazzling strength. I no longer believed in the compassion of men; I believed in the strength og the gods. I had averted my eyes from my suffering and fixed them on the stars.”
― Shan Sa, quote from Empress
Shan Sa
Born place: in Beijing, China
Born date October 26, 1972
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“I'll never leave if you keep feeding me bacon every day," Peter says to Aunt Beth.”
― H.M. Ward, quote from Damaged 2
“I’ve never come across anyone like him. His intensity is entirely consuming, and when I’m not with him, all I can think about are ways I can sneak around to get to him. It’s like he’s the oxygen I need to survive, and when he’s gone I’m suffocating. I don’t know if love is supposed to feel this way, but it’s all I know, and it’s all with him.”
― E.K. Blair, quote from Bang
“I discovered hunger don’t make you resentful. Hunger makes you slow and brooding, like you are just waiting and waiting. You don’t feel like going anywhere or doing anything. Hunger makes you set around, makes you want to go to bed early and sleep late. You don’t want to think about nothing, for if you think you will think about good things to eat. When you’re hungry you don’t want to think at all. You want time to pass. You are waiting for something to happen. You don’t want to waste effort. You are saving the fat on your bones and the strength in your blood. You are saving your breath. When you’re hungry you don’t even daydream a lot. You just drift through the hours and the first thing you know another day is over, another night has gone by. Mostly you want to forget.”
― Robert Morgan, quote from Gap Creek
“The only way you can do anything of value is to have the effort come out of non-doing and to let go of caring whether it will be of use or not. Otherwise, self-involvement and greediness can sneak in and distort your relationship to the work, or the work itself, so that it is off in some way, biased, impure, and ultimately not completely satisfying, even if it is good.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, quote from Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
“Our lives can only hold so much. If they’re filled with one thing, they can’t be filled with another. We ought to do a lot of thinking about what we want to fill them with.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, quote from Betsy Was a Junior
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