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!”
“What's the haps, Alli? Writing your memoirs?"
"People who write memoirs should die.”
“5Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, Whose hope is in the LORD his God, 6Who made heaven and earth, The sea, and all that is in them;”
“Whatever we may say will not be the objective level, which remains fundamentally un-speakable. Thus, we can sit on the object called 'a chair', but we cannot sit on the noise we made or the name we applied to that object.”
“Low branches, dead and snapping against us. On the lookout for rattlesnakes. But the path was short enough, and soon we were on a kind of terrace. Old lawn overgrown by grass and weed, old concrete cracked in discrete chunks, vast areas overrun. An enchanted place for me, and only for me, because I was too young to remember, and so in my mind this place could become more.”
“The security guards knew me well and were always happy to see me. The woman guard would greet me with a smile. “Ah, back again today?” I”
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