Yangsze Choo Quotes

#1. Qing Ming, the festival of the dead,

Yangsze Choo

#2. If I had known how easy it is to lose your life, I would have treasured mine better.

Yangsze Choo

#3. For when the cycle of violence escapes its confines in hell, it causes earthquakes, floods, and other calamities.

Yangsze Choo

#4. Women had little security other than jewelry, so even the poorest among us sported gold chains, earrings, and rings as their insurance.

Yangsze Choo

#5. You want promises of success, assurances that all will be well? I don't do that. Ask your amah here. That's why I'm the real deal.

Yangsze Choo

#6. Amah was always wary of voicing misfortunes, fearing that to do so would only make them come true.

Yangsze Choo

#7. It was strange to think that power in this world belonged to old men and young women.

Yangsze Choo

#8. We Chinese did not like to give or receive certain gifts for superstitious reasons: knives, because they could sever a relationship; handkerchiefs, for they portended weeping; and clocks, as they were thought to measure out the days of your life.

Yangsze Choo

#9. The contrast between the realization of his neglect and the fondness I had for my father was painful.

Yangsze Choo

#10. The hours, days, and years that had bled away in his opium haze demanded a payment from my future.

Yangsze Choo

#11. I don't keep mistresses; it's far too much trouble. I'm offering to marry you, although I might regret it. And if you think the Lim family disapproved of your marriage, wait until you meet mine.

Yangsze Choo

#12. The problem with the dead was that they all wanted someone to listen to them.

Yangsze Choo

#13. It seemed to me that in this confluence of cultures we had acquired one another's superstitions without necessarily any of their comforts.

Yangsze Choo

#14. Was this love? It was like a consuming flame, licking through my defenses at a slow burn.

Yangsze Choo

#15. In the darkness of a thousand
withered souls, it was Er Lang's hand that I
sought, and his voice that I longed to hear. Perhaps
it is selfish of me, but an uncertain future
with him, in all its laughter and quarrels, is better
than being left behind.

Yangsze Choo

#16. Confucius, who had said it was better not to know about ghosts and gods, but rather to focus on the world we lived in.

Yangsze Choo