Leslie T. Chang · 420 pages
Rating: (6.6K votes)
“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
Leslie T. Chang
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“Cohen starts smiling and nods his head. “This is good, Daddy. I knew my angels would give me sisters. I asked them.” Melissa stops laughing and grabs my hand. “What do you mean, baby?” she asks on a whisper. “I asked Nana, Mommy Fia, and Auntie Grace to give me a sister. I said I wanted a sister more than anything in the world so I can look out for her like Daddy looks out for you.”
― Harper Sloan, quote from Uncaged
“Just promise me something . . . .” He looked down at my hand fisted in his and pushed his fingers into it, compelling me to entwine my fingers with his, a move that was perfectly him. He'd pushed himself into my heart much the same way. “Promise,” he went on, “that if you hear about a grupped-up tiger gone feral, you'll hire a hunter to put me down.”
“No,” I gasped. “You'll have years before that happens and by then, Dr. Solis will have found a cure.”
― Kat Falls, quote from Inhuman
“There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become a part of you, in a way that words in a book you've read only once can't.”
― Gail Carson Levine, quote from Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly
“«Es necesario acostumbrarse a la idea de que 'tiempo' es un concepto relativo, y que propiamente tiene que ser completado por el concepto de una pleromática existencia 'simultánea' o 'bárdica' de todos los acontecimientos históricos. Lo que existe en el pléroma como 'acontecimiento' eterno, aparece en el tiempo como secuencia aperiódica, es decir, se repite varias veces de modo irregular.»”
― C.G. Jung, quote from Answer to Job
“But the manner of giving voice to thoughts and feelings becomes particularly significant in the case of negative feelings or doubts about a relationship. The difference was highlighted for me when a fifty-year-old divorced man told me about his experiences in forming new relationships with women. On this matter, he was clear: "I do not value my fleeting thoughts, and I do not value the fleeting thoughts of others." He felt that the relationship he was currently in had been endangered, even permanently weakened, by the woman's practice of tossing out her passing thoughts, because, early in their courtship, many of her thoughts were fears about the relationship. Not surprisingly, since they did not yet know each other well, she worried about whether she could trust him, whether their relationship would destroy her independence, whether this relationship was really right for her. He felt she should have kept these fears and doubts to herself and waited to see how things turned out.
As it happens, things turned out well. The woman decided that the relationship was right for her, she could trust him, and she did not have to give up her independence. But he felt, at the time that he told me of this, that he had still not recovered from the wear and tear of coping with her earlier doubts. As he put it, he was still dizzy from having been bounced around like a yo-yo tied to the string of her stream of consciousness.
In contrast, the man admitted, he himself goes to the other extreme: he never expresses his fears or misgivings about their relationship at all. If he's unhappy but doesn't say anything about it, his unhappiness expresses itself in a kind of distancing coldness. This response is just what women fear most, and just the reason they prefer to express dissatisfactions and doubts - as an antidote to the isolation and distance that would result from keeping them to themselves.
The different perspectives on expressing or concealing dissatisfactions and doubts may reflect a difference in men's and women's awareness of the power of their words to affect others. In repeatedly telling him what she feared about their relationship, she spoke as though she assumed he was invulnerable and could not be hurt by what she said; perhaps she was underestimating the power of her words to affect him. For his part, when he refrains from expressing negative thoughts or feelings, he seems to be overestimating the power of his words to hurt her, when, ironically, she is more likely to be hurt by his silence than his words.
Such impasses will perhaps never be settled to the complete satisfaction of both parties, but understanding the differing views can help detoxify the situation, and both can make adjustments.”
― Deborah Tannen, quote from You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation
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