“He was in my hair, my eyes, my fingers, my heart. I day-dreamed about what he was doing, thinking, seeing, smelling, feeling. I could not eat for thoughts of him.”
“In that moment I understood that the cruelest words in the universe are if only.”
“I've come to believe that part of lovesickness comes from this conflict between control and desire. In love we have no control. Our hearts and minds are tormented, teased, enticed and delighted by the overwhelming strength of emotions that make us try to forget the real world.”
“All women on earth-- and men, too for that matter-- hope for the kind of love that transforms us, raises us up out of the everyday, & gives us the courage to survive our little deaths: the heartache of unfulfilled dreams, of career and personal disappointments, of broken love affairs.”
“When people are alive they love, when they die, they keep loving. If love ends when person dies, that is not real love”
“How can we not create a fantasy in our minds when the reality is so hard?”
“Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming -- weren't our dreams what gave us strength, hope, and desire?”
“My heart is empty & my life has no value anymore. Each moment a thousand tears.”
“Perhaps he was afraid as I was that we'd be caught. Or perhaps he was breathing me in just as I was letting him come into my lungs, my eyes, my heart.”
“I didn't know you would be here last night, but you were. We can't fight fate. Instead, we must accept that fate has given us a special opportunity.”
“كل النساء على الأرض والرجال أيضاُ ، يتمنون ذلك النوع من الحب الذي يحولنا ويرتقي بنا فوق الحياة اليومية ويمنحنا الشجاعة لنتخطى مآسينا الصغيرة :كـ انفطار قلوبنا على الأحلام التي لم تتحقق وخيبات الأمل الشخصية وعلاقات الحب المحطمة .”
“إن القصص تخبرنا كيف ينبغي لنا أن نعيش ..”
“My love for him had never gone away but only changed, growing deeper like wine fermenting or pickles curing. It bore into me with the pervasiveness of water working its way to the center of a mountain.”
“The greatest calling of all is to have a literary life.”
“Poetry is on earth to make you serene, not corrupt your mind, thoughts,or emotions”
“Let those who believe, believe. Let those who doubt, doubt.”
“Gone were my girlish ideas about romantic love and my later ideas about sexual love. From Yi, I learned to appreciate deep-heart love.”
“So many mistakes. So many errors. So much tragedy as a result. In that moment I understood that the cruelest words in the universe are if only.”
“I saw that deep-heart love meant loving someone in spite of and because of his limitations.”
“When in the world did anyone die from a dream?”
“عندما يكون الناس أحياء فإنهم يحبون . وعندما يموتون يستمرون بالحب. وإن إنتهى الحب بموت الإنسان, فهذا ليس بحب حقيقي”
“فهمت كم يمكن لروعة الربيع أن تكون مزعجة و وقتية”
“أليست الاحلام هي ما تمنحنا القوة والأمل والرغبة”
“إن معظم من يحزنون لزوال الربيع يتأثرون كل التأثر لرؤية البراعم المتساقطة, كما شعرت عندما مشيت لآخر مرة في حديقتنا. إن لينيانغ ترى الاوراق فتدرك أن شبابها وجمالها عابران, ولكنها لاتدرك أن حياتها هشة أيضا”
“إن الزواج يشبه في نظرنا نحن البنات الموت من بعض النواحي لاننا نودع آباءنا وأمهاتنا وعماتنا وأبناء عمنا وخادماتنا اللواتي اعتنين بنا ونذهب إلى حياة جديدة كليا. فنعيش مع عائلاتنا الحقيقية التي تدرج اسماءنا في قاعة اسلافها .وبهذه الطريقة يشبه الزواج الموت والبعث من جديد من دون الذهاب الى العالم الإخر”
“I want a marriage of companions—one of shared lives and shared poems,' he murmured. 'If we were husband and wife, we would collect books, read, and drink tea together. As I told you before, I'd want you for what's in here.'
Again he pointed to my heart, but I felt it in a place far lower in my body.”
“إليكم حقيقة من حقائق الموت : أحيانا ينسى المرء أشياء اعتبرها في الماضي مهمة”
“قبل ألف سنة , كتب الشاعر هان يون قائلا"كل الكائنات التي لاتعيش بسلام تصيح". وقارن بهذا حاجة البشر إلى التعبير عن مشاعرهم بالكتابة ,بالقوى الطبيعية التي تجبر النباتات على الحفيف في الرياح أو المعادن على الرنين”
“لماذا تشبه أفكار النساء الازهار في مهب الرياح. فتنجرف مع التيار وتتلاشى بلا أثر?”
“Kaladin frowned. “Wait. Are you wearing cologne? In prison?”
“Well, there was no need to be barbaric, just because I was incarcerated.”
“Storms, you’re spoiled,” Kaladin said, smiling.
“I’m refined, you insolent farmer,” Adolin said. Then he grinned. “Besides, I’ll have you know that I had to use cold water for my baths while here.”
“Poor boy.”
“Life was a swarm of accidents waiting in the treetops, descending upon any living thing that passed, ready to eat them alive. You swam in a river of chance and coincidence. You clung to the happiest accidents- the rest you let float by.”
“Our textbooks were ridiculous propaganda. The first English sentence we learned was "Long live Chairman Mao!" But no one dared to explain the sentence grammatically. In Chinese the term for the optative mood, expressing a wish or desire, means 'something unreal." In 1966 a lecturer at Sichuan University had been beaten up for 'having the audacity to suggest that "Long live Chairman Mao!" was unreal!" One chapter was about a model youth hero who had drowned after jumping into a flood to save an electricity pole because the pole would be used to carry the word of Mao.
With great difficulty, I managed to borrow some English language textbooks published before the Cultural Revolution from lecturers in my department and from Jin-ming, who sent me books from his university by post. These contained extracts from writers like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde, and stories from European and American history. They were a joy to read, but much of my energy went toward finding them and then trying to keep them.
Whenever someone approached, I would quickly cover the books with a newspaper. This was only partly because of their 'bourgeois' content. It was also important not to appear to be studying too conscientiously, and not to arouse my fellow students' jealousy by reading something far beyond them. Although we were studying English, and were paid par fly for our propaganda value by the government to do this, we must not be seen to be too devoted to our subject: that was considered being 'white and expert." In the mad logic of the day, being good at one's profession ('expert') was automatically equated with being politically unreliable ('white').”
“Winter is coming, Elena," he said, and his voice was clear and chilling even over the howling of the wind, "An unforgiving season. Before it comes, you'll have learned what I can and can't do. Before winter is here, you'll have joined me. You'll be mine.”
“If I'm yours and you're mine...then I will take you, wherever and whenever I can.”
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