Quotes from Celeste Ng

She drove on into the night, homeward, her hair weeping tiny slow streams down her back.

A lifetime of practical and comfortable considerations settled atop the spark inside her like a thick, heavy blanket.

She had spent the night planning and now that it was time, she hardly thought at all. It was as if she were standing outside herself, watching someone else do these things.

She was always doing that, telling him stories. Prying open cracks for magic to seep in, making the world a place of possibility. After she left, he had stopped believing all those fantasies. Wispy, false dreams that disintegrated in the morning's light. Now it occurs to him that, perhaps, there might be truth in them after all.

Ela havia aprendido (...) que a vida podia estar seguindo seu caminhozinho seguro e então, sem qualquer aviso, descarrilhar de forma impressionante.

We're committed, as she gets older, to teaching her about her birth culture. And of course she already loves the rice. Actually, it was her first solid food.

There aren't any Shakers in Shaker Heights," he said. "They all died out. Didn't believe in sex. They just named the town after them.

For the first time in his life, he is unremarkable, and this feels like power.

Somewhere out there, you knew, wealthy people were barricaded in their fortresses, fed and warm, if not happy, but soon you stopped thinking of them. You stopped thinking about other people at all.

The average American, one judge ruled, cannot reasonably be expected to visually distinguish between various varieties of persons of Asian origin. As if they were types of apples, or breeds of dogs; as if those persons of Asian origin did not count as average Americans themselves.

Here the stars dazzled her eyes like sequins. This is what infinity looks like, she thought. Their clarity overwhelmed her, like pinpricks at her heart.

Rules existed for a reason: if you followed them, you would succeed; if you didn't, you might burn the world to the ground.

Bird laughs. For the first time in his life, he is unremarkable, and this feels like power.

They did not care if Pearl saw them this way. They were so artlessly beautiful, even right out of bed. Where did this ease come from? How could they be so at home, so sure of themselves, even in pajamas?

white comforter. It was midafternoon, and the curtains were drawn, but a lamp in the corner had been left on, a towel draped over the shade to mute it, and the

He had always admired his wife's idealism, her belief that the world could be made better,

By the time they had graduated, he had fallen for Shaker Heights as well, the way Elena described it: the first planned community, the most progressive community, the perfect place for young idealists. In his own little hometown, they'd been suspicious of ideas: he'd grown up surrounded by a kind of resigned cynicism, though he'd been sure the world could be better.

they learned that an unmowed lawn would result in a polite but stern letter from the city, noting that their grass was over six inches tall and that if the situation was not rectified, the city would mow the grass—and charge them a hundred dollars—in three days. There were many rules to be learned.

So you banned all those books, Sadie said, and the teacher had blinked twice at her over her glasses. Oh no, sweetie, she said. People think that sometimes, but no. No one bans anything. Haven't you ever heard of the Bill of Rights? The class giggled, and Sadie flushed. Every school makes its own independent judgments, the teacher said.

Mrs. Richardson, however, could not let Izzy be, and the feeling coalesced in all of them: Izzy pushing, her mother restraining, and after a time no one could remember how the dynamic had started, only that it had existed always.

the problem with rules, he reflected, was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time there were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on.

He had forgotten that anything could be so tender. He breaks the bun open, revealing glossy bits of pork and glaze, a secret red heart. When he puts it to his mouth, it is like a kiss: sweet and salty and warm.

She waited, letting the uneasy silence grow. No one, she had learned from experience, could stand such silence for long. If you waited long enough, someone would start talking, and more often than not they would give you a chance to press further, to crack the conversation open and scoop out what you needed to know.

Ed Lim had gone to four different toy stores searching... he would have bought it for his daughter, whatever the price.