The Bonesetter's Daughter

Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.

That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.

After all, Bao Bomu says, what is the past but what we choose to remember?

What is the past but what we choose to remember?

A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.

Chaos is the penance for leisure.

You can have pride in what you do each day, but not arrogance in what you were born with.

But I don't have anything left inside of me to figure out where I fit in or what I want. If I want anything, it's to know what's possible to want.

They know where happiness lies, not in a cave or a country, but in love and the freedom to give and take what has been there all along.

He asked if he could recite a poem he had written that morning: 'You speak,' he said, 'the language of shooting stars, more surprising than sunrise, more brilliant than the sun, as brief as sunset. I want to follow its trail to eternity.

Dementia was like a truth serum.

You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.

So much of history is mystery. We don't know what is lost forever, what will surface again. All objects exist in a moment of time. And that fragment of time is preserved or lost or found in mysterious ways. Mystery is a wonderful part of life.

All objects exist in a moment of time.

Dementia. Ruth puzzled over the diagnosis: How could such a beautiful-sounding word apply to such a destructive disease? It was a name befitting a goddess: Dementia, who caused her sister Demeter to forget to turn winter into spring.

That is the problem with modern ink from a bottle. You do not have to think. You simply write what is swimming on the top of your brain. And the top is nothing but pond scum, dead leaves, and mosquito spawn. But when you push an inkstick along an inkstone, you take the first step to cleansing your mind and your heart. You push and you ask yourself, What are my intentions? What is in my heart that matches my mind? I

Forever did not mean what it once had. Forever was what changed inevitably over time.

Free time was the most precious time, when you should be doing what you loved, or at least slowing down enough to remember what made your life worthwhile and happy.

The farther you move from the core of the problem, the faster the situation spins out of control.

What do you think was the very first sound to become a word, a meaning?' ... And then I realized what the first word must have been: ma, the sound of a baby smacking its lips in search of her mother's breast. Ma, ma, ma. Then the mother decided that was her name and she began to speak, too. She taught the baby to be careful: sky, fire, tiger. A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.

You are beauty, we are beauty, we are divine, unchanged by time.

Precious Auntie, what is our name? I always meant to claim it as my own. Come help me remember. I'm not a little girl anymore. I'm not afraid of ghosts. Are you still mad at me? Don't you recognize me? I am LuLing, your daughter.

Now they seemed to be in a contest over who could irritate her more, and she sometimes had to remind herself that teenagers had souls

In all these years we've been together," he said, "I don't think I know an important part of you. You keep secrets inside you. You hide. It's as though I've never seen you naked, and I've had to imagine what you look like behind the drapes." "I'm not consciously hiding anything." After Ruth said that, she wondered whether it was true. Then again, who revealed everything - the irritations, the fears? How tiresome that would be. What did he mean by secrets? "I want us to be intimate. I want to know what you want. Not just with us, but from life. What makes you happiest? Are you doing what you want to do?

I'm not consciously hiding anything.' After Ruth said that she wondered whether it was true. Then again, who revealed everything - the irritation, the fears? How tiresome that would be.

...you have to believe in its principles. Anything is possible, as long as it's for the good of the world. Make the exception. Live exceptionally. And if you can't do that, maybe we should consider whether you're right for the project. Think about it, then let's talk tomorrow.

Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking. “I

As a precaution, Ruth had also gnawed over the worst possibilities—brain tumor, Alzheimer’s, stroke—believing this would ensure that it was not these things. History had always proven that she worried for nothing.