Quotes from Celeste Ng

Anger is fear's bodyguard

Perfection: that was the goal, and perhaps the Shakers had lived it so strongly it had seeped into the soil itself, feeding those who grew up there with a propensity to overachieve and a deep intolerance for flaws.

Nothing is an accident,' Pauline would say, again and again.

she did not know how to be anything else.

But at that moment she had known, with a certainty she would never feel about anything else in her life, that it was right, that she wanted this man in her life. Something inside her said, He understands. What it's like to be different.

Don't ever smile if you don't want to,' she said.

Hers had been just one of the pale, pretty faces, indistinguishable from the next, and though he would never fully realize it, this was the first reason he came to love her: because she had blended in so perfectly, because she had seemed so completely and utterly at home.

The touch of his lips on hers had startled her. He had tasted like coffee, warm and slightly bitter, and he had kissed back. That had startled her, too. As if he were ready for it, as if it were as much his idea as hers.

she would grow up to be, and you saw them all simultaneously, like a 3-D image. It made your head spin. It was a place you could take refuge, if you knew how to get in. And each time you left it, each time your child passed out of your sight, you feared you might never be able to return to that place again.

Moody slid shrieking down the hill, backward and belly first and three at a time and once – in Trip's case – standing up like a surfer. Mrs. Richardson, perched atop the hill, applauded and cheered. Then Izzy went down

Maybe sometimes, she thought, the bird with its head held high took flight. Maybe sometimes, the nail that stuck up pierced the foot that stomped down.

the world was on fire, you might as well burn bright. Late nights

Mrs. Richardson remained annoyed with

Facebook group using the hashtag #ourmissinghearts, dedicated to raising awareness about missing persons. I'm grateful for the work they do in trying to bring peace to families hoping for answers.

At bedtime, Nath and Lydia brushed their teeth sociably at the sink, taking turns to spit, saying goodnight as if it were any other night. It was too big to talk about, what had happened. It was like a landscape they could not see all at once; it was like the sky at night, which turned and turned so they couldn't find its edges. It would always feel too big. He pushed her in. And then he pushed her out. All her life, Lydia would remember one thing. All his life, Nath would remember another.

Laura Briggs's Taking Children: A History of American Terror gives an invaluable overview.

You saw it in photos, yours the only black head of hair in the scene, as if you'd been cut out and pasted in. You thought: Wait, what's she doing there? And then you remembered that 'she' was 'you'. You kept your head down and thought about school, or space, or the future, and tried to forget about it. And you did, until it happened again.

Everything that loomed so large close up—school, their parents, their lives—all you had to do was step away, and they shrank to nothing. You could stop taking their phone calls, tear up their letters, pretend they'd never existed. Start over as a new person with a new life. Just a problem of geography, he thought, with the confidence of someone who had never yet tried to free himself of family.

though she knew no more about them than anyone else. It was as if those words were their own independent creatures, off leading their own life—which, in truth, they were. What did you call it—surely not pride, because you could take no credit for these accomplishments, you could only marvel like a stranger at the things this being had gone on to do without you.

While the Irish and the Germans and the Swedes crowded onto steamship decks, waving as the pale green torch of the Statue of Liberty came into view, the coolies had to find other means to reach the land where all men were created equal.

So concerned about wearing the right things, saying the right things, being friends with the right people.

Anna Akhmatova

In Chinatowns, the lives of all those paper sons were fragile and easily torn. Everyone's name was false. Everyone hoped not to be found out and sent back. Everyone clustered together so they wouldn't stand out.

It was a place you could take refuge, if you knew how to get in. And each time you left it, each time your child passed out of your sight, you feared you might never be able to