Grace Lin · 282 pages
Rating: (28.3K votes)
“If you make happy those that are near, those that are far will come.”
“Whenever I see her, we laugh enough to last for the month. She's my best friend, and someday when we're old enough I'm going to talk her into staying here forever.”
“She's my friend, the boy said simply. That's who she is and that's enough for me. As Minli looked at the buffalo boy, aglow with happiness against his poor surroundings, she saw it was enough for him. More than enough, as the smile that kept curling up on his face told her.”
“Yes," Ba said sadly, "it is impossible. But it is not ridiculous.”
“You only lose what you cling to.”
“Bringing fortune to our house! Making Fruitless Mountain bloom! You're always wishing to do impossible things! Stop believing stories and stop wasting your time.”
“That is a question you have to ask the Old Man of the Moon.”
“Fortune was not a house full of gold and jade, but something much more.”
“Stories are not a waste of time”
“Impossible?" the goldfish man said. "Don't you see? Even fates written in the Book of Fortunes can be changed. How can anything be impossible?”
“For even in the misty light, the goldfish man could see her smiling a secret smile up to the sky to where the mountain meets the moon.”
“Minli suddenly thought of Ma and Ba. A wave of longing washed through her and a dryness caught in her throat that the tea could not moisten. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.”
“Do you remember the story I told you about the paper of happiness? And the secret, which was one word written over and over again? … I have thought a long time about what that word could have been,” Ba said. “Was it wisdom or honor? Love or truth? For a long time I liked to think that the word was kindness.”
Ma’s face remained hidden in Minli’s bed, but her sobs had stopped and Ba knew she was listening.
“But now,” Ba said, “I think, perhaps, the word was faith.”
“او سرانجام فهمیده بود که خنده و سرخوشی دخترش با داشتن لباسهای زیبا و جواهرات بیشتر نمیشد و شور و شادی، مثل هدیه ای بسته بندی شده در انتظار باز شدن، داخل خانه ی خودش بود!”
“Why do I want to touch you? Are you fucking kidding me right now? I want to help you. I want to hold you. I want to make it all okay for you. I want to fucking touch you because you are the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen, and I can’t imagine never being able to hold your hand or kiss you. And yes – I want to fuck you, too, like I’ve never wanted anything in my whole life.”
“God of the green pastures and the still waters, please don't help me. I want to do it by myself so that You'll know I've found something I can do for You ... I am David. Amen.”
“--she walked into her bathroom, stripped, and entered the shower.
The door opened a minute later to expose Riley standing there, beer in hand.
Scraping damp strands of red off her face, she glared at him. "I don't remember giving you an invitation."
"You said to amuse myself while you shower." A slow, slow, deliciously slow smile.
It said gotcha”
“You are nothing but wilderness. No constraint. No mind.
You shout the word—mind, mind, mind—over and over and then you laugh, saying as I live and breathe, a slave by choice.”
“They’re humanity writ small, and many of them haven’t learned how to hide, how to pretend to know things they don’t know, how to doubt the things they want to believe in.”
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