Quotes from Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

“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.”
― Leslie T. Chang, quote from Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

“The binders hinted at the reasons past relationships had gone sour. SEEKING A 28- TO 34-YEAR-OLD WITH AN OPEN PERSONALITY WHO DOESN'T GAMBLE. SEEKING A CULTIVATED PERSON NOT ADDICTED TO WINE AND WOMEN. An occasional brave soul would throw caution to the winds: SEEKING A 35- TO 45-YEAR-OLD. THE REST IS UP TO DESTINY.”
― Leslie T. Chang, quote from Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

“SALES SPECIALIST. CAN EAT BITTERNESS AND ENDURE HARDSHIP.”
― Leslie T. Chang, quote from Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

“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.”
― Leslie T. Chang, quote from Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

“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.”
― Leslie T. Chang, quote from Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

“No one wanted to date a man who was only five feet three inches tall.”
― Leslie T. Chang, quote from Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

“It isn’t very interesting,” my father said. “He just writes things like, ‘Today the Japanese army is closing in around the city.’ Stuff like that.”
― Leslie T. Chang, quote from Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

“My grandfather came back, and his death bought the house at no. 6; half a century later it was turned into yet another journey to America. And that was fitting, because the history of a family begins when a person leaves home.”
― Leslie T. Chang, quote from Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

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Popular quotes

“Lamenting the vagaries of fate may leave us with a galling sense of helpless frustration, which many escape by transforming the tragedy of the human condition into the specific sins of specific societies. This turns an insoluble problem of cosmic justice into an apparently manageable issue of social justice. Since the sins of human beings are virtually inexhaustible, there is seldom a lack of examples of wrongdoing to which intergroup differences can be attributed, rightly or wrongly. Where the quest for injustice is over-riding, among the things it over-rides are logic and evidence.”
― Thomas Sowell, quote from Black Rednecks and White Liberals

“Eventually, something or someone will come along in your life to show you that what other people think don’t matter. You’ll find the strength to not let what people say affect you in quite the same way.”
― Tillie Cole, quote from Sweet Soul

“Then, just as we were to leave on a whirlwind honeymoon in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, a call came from Australia. Steve’s friend John Stainton had word that a big croc had been frequenting areas too close to civilization, and someone had been taking potshots at him.
“It’s a big one, Stevo, maybe fourteen or fifteen feet,” John said over the phone. “I hate to catch you right at this moment, but they’re going to kill him unless he gets relocated.”
John was one of Australia’s award-winning documentary filmmakers. He and Steve had met in the late 1980s, when Steve would help John shoot commercials that required a zoo animal like a lizard or a turtle. But their friendship did not really take off until 1990, when an Australian beer company hired John to film a tricky shot involving a crocodile.
He called Steve. “They want a bloke to toss a coldie to another bloke, but a croc comes out of the water and snatches at it. The guy grabs the beer right in front of the croc’s jaws. You think that’s doable?”
“Sure, mate, no problem at all,” Steve said with his usual confidence. “Only one thing, it has to be my hand in front of the croc.”
John agreed. He journeyed up to the zoo to film the commercial. It was the first time he had seen Steve on his own turf, and he was impressed. He was even more impressed when the croc shoot went off flawlessly.
Monty, the saltwater crocodile, lay partially submerged in his pool. An actor fetched a coldie from the esky and tossed it toward Steve. As Steve’s hand went above Monty’s head, the crocodile lunged upward in a food response. On film it looked like the croc was about to snatch the can--which Steve caught right in front of his jaws. John was extremely impressed. As he left the zoo after completing the commercial shoot, Steve gave him a collection of VHS tapes.
Steve had shot the videotapes himself. The raw footage came from Steve simply propping his camera in a tree, or jamming it into the mud, and filming himself single-handedly catching crocs.
John watched the tapes when he got home to Brisbane. He told me later that what he saw was unbelievable. “It was three hours of captivating film and I watched it straight through, twice,” John recalled to me. “It was Steve. The camera loved him.”
He rang up his contacts in television and explained that he had a hot property. The programmers couldn’t use Steve’s original VHS footage, but one of them had a better idea. He gave John the green light to shoot his own documentary of Steve.
That led to John Stainton’s call to Oregon on the eve of our honeymoon.
“I know it’s not the best timing, mate,” John said, “but we could take a crew and film a documentary of you rescuing this crocodile.”
Steve turned to me. Honeymoon or crocodile? For him, it wasn’t much of a quandary. But what about me?”
“Let’s go,” I replied.”
― Terri Irwin, quote from Steve & Me

“Political correctness is America's newest form of intolerance, and it is especially pernicious because it comes disguised as tolerance. It presents itself as fairness, yet attempts to restrict and control people's language with strict codes and rigid rules. I'm not sure that's the way to fight discrimination. I'm not sure silencing people or forcing them to alter their speech is the best method for solving problems that go much deeper than speech.”
― George Carlin, quote from When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?

“Did you love Paul Ivory?"
"Yes."
"I suppose it ended badly."
"Yes."
"You must have been very unhappy."
"I died, and Adam resurrected me.”
― Shirley Hazzard, quote from The Transit of Venus

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