Quotes from Girl in Translation

Jean Kwok ·  290 pages

Rating: (39.5K votes)


“What a relationship looks like on the outside isn't the same as what it's like on the inside. You can be more in love with someone in your mind than with the person you see every day.”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation


“Sometimes our fate is different from the one we imagined for ourselves.”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation


“Nobody can change who you are, except for you.”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation


“I never want to love someone like that,not even him,so much that there would be no room left for myself,so much that I wouldn't be able to survive if he left me.”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation


“You may need to change your dreams.”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation



“I was a fool. I should have grabbed him when I could have had him all to myself, snatched him up like a ripe mango at the market. But how was I to know that this was what love felt like?”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation


“We would be allowed to work and not cause any trouble for her, but she didn't want us to be any more successful than she was”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation


“I have not been so much pushed by winds as pulled forward by the force of my decisions.”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation


“No matter how flawed someone else may be, that doesn't give us the right to be less than we are, does it? We are decent people and we repay our debts.”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation


“When I’m with you, I could drink water and be full.”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation



“Dice un proverbio chino que el destino es como un temporal de vientos que, provenientes de todos los rincones, azotan nuestras vidas y nos empujan por las sendas del tiempo; quienes posean fuerza de voluntad, lucharán contra la tormenta y podrán escoger su propio camino, mientras que los débiles acabarán allá adonde los lleve la tempestad.”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation


“It may not seem like much - a few kisses in the dark - but it was enough to burn a hole like an ulcer in my heart.”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation


“There's a Chinese saying that the fates are winds that blow through our lives from every angle, urging us along the paths of time. Those who are strong-willed may fight the storm and possibly choose their own road, while the weak must go where they are blown. I say I have not been so much pushed by winds as pulled forward by the force of my decisions.”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation


“Avevo perso gran parte del mio interesse per i cosmetici. Non che avessi smesso di preoccuparmi del mio aspetto, anzi, ma non riuscivo a comprendere sino in fondo come si potesse risultare simpatica o bella. Non capivo come funzionavano queste cose.”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation


“I would have chosen statistical probabilities over luck any day.”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation



“Me sentía como un espantapájaros ante una tempestad. En cualquier momento, el viento podría derribarme y esparcir todas las piezas que formaban mi cuerpo. Me despertaría para darme cuenta de que no quedaba nada de mí, ni rastro de la persona que quería ser.”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation


“I never want to love someone like that, not even Matt, so much that there would be no room left for myself, so much that I wouldn’t be able to survive if he left me.”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation


“nadie puede cambiar lo que eres, excepto tú misma.”
― Jean Kwok, quote from Girl in Translation


Video

About the author

Jean Kwok
Born place: Hong Kong
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“They say that childhood forms us, that those early influences are the key to everything. Is the peace of the soul so easily won? Simply the inevitable result of a happy childhood. What makes childhood happy? Parental harmony? Good health? Security? Might not a happy childhood be the worst possible preparation for life? Like leading a lamb to the slaughter.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage


“I was horror-stricken at the contrast between the serenity of but a few moments ago and the wild stirrings of desire I could already feel within me. l was shuddering as you do when you find yourself alone at night on some desolate moorland, when all familiar bearings are lost and a panic fear comes over you that you can dispel only by calmly studying all the landmarks”
― Antoine François Prévost, quote from Manon Lescaut


“In the arc of an unremarkable life, a life whose triumphs are small and personal, whose trials are ordinary enough, as tempered in their pain as in their resolution of pain, the claim of exclusivity in love requires both a certain kind of courage and a good dose of delusion. Irish Mary, Eva's sister, would have been happy enough to accept my father's ring, I suppose, had Eva not chosen to stay in Ireland and marry Tom. My mother's first fiancé would have married her gladly if he hadn't been kept too long overseas by the Navy, if my father hadn't beaten him home, on points, a full year before. It might have been Cody or John in the car with your father, that day on Long Island. I might have been gone. Those of us who claim exclusivity in love do so with a liar's courage: there are a hundred opportunities, thousands over the years, for a sense of falsehood to seep in, for all that we imagine as inevitable to become arbitrary, for our history together to reveal itself as only a matter of chance and happenstance, nothing irrepeatable, or irreplaceable, the circumstantial mingling of just one of the so many million with just one more.”
― Alice McDermott, quote from Charming Billy


“The rich does not work for money, but money work for them...., While the poor work for money.Illiteracy, both in word and numbers, is the foundation of financial struggle....,Wealth is a person's ability to survive so many number of days forward... or if i stopped working today, how could i survive?...,Wealth is the measure of cash flow from to asset column compared with the expense column...,”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki, quote from Rich Dad's Retire Young, Retire Rich: How to Get Rich Quickly and Stay Rich Forever!


“I'm not made to philosophize, I don't have the heart for it. My heart is more like a machine for making blood to be spilled in a knife fight...”
― Camilo José Cela, quote from The Family of Pascual Duarte


Interesting books

Sweet Sleep
(62)
Sweet Sleep
by Kim Cormack
Story Engineering: Character Development, Story Concept, Scene Construction
(2.4K)
Story Engineering: C...
by Larry Brooks
Time and Time Again
(6.5K)
Time and Time Again
by Ben Elton
Psycho-Cybernetics
(12.2K)
Losing Me Finding You
(2K)
Losing Me Finding Yo...
by Natalie Ward
Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing
(2.9K)
Mastering the Art of...
by Anya von Bremzen

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.