Quotes from Celeste Ng

Poems of Akhmatova, selected and translated by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward, gives

Na casa de Pauline e Mal, nada era simples. Na casa dos pais de Mia, as coisas eram boas ou ruins, certas ou erradas, úteis ou desnecessárias. Não havia meio-termo. Ali ela descobriu que tudo tinha nuance, um lado não revelado ou profundidades inexploradas. Tudo merecia ser analisado com mais atenção.

Facebook group using the hashtag #ourmissinghearts,

It strikes him that there is a beautiful symmetry to life.

What a job, clearing the homes of the dead, piling whole lives into garbage bins and lugging them to the curb.

Writings on McCarthyism, including Naming Names, by Victor S. Navasky, and The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents, by Ellen Schrecker and Phillip Deery, provided a chilling glimpse into how all-pervasive fear can become; Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime, by Geoffrey R. Stone, cataloged dozens of historical examples with eerie resonances to our current times; and books such as Ronald C. Rosbottom's When Paris Went Dark: The City

It struck her then, as if someone had said it aloud: her mother was dead, and the only thing worth remembering about her, in the end, was that she had cooked. Marilyn thought uneasily of her own life, of hours spent making breakfasts, serving dinners, packing lunches into neat paper bags.

of Light Under German Occupation, 1940–1944

She had been brought up to follow rules, to believe that the proper functioning of the world depended upon her compliance, and follow them—and believe—she did.

She knew at last where everything had gone wrong. And she knew where she had to go.

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. As if any of this might be justified by careful distinguishing on the part of the one wielding the bat.

That first morning, James slid into his seat and the girl next to him asked, "What's wrong with your eyes?" It wasn't until he heard the horror in the teacher's voice—"Shirley Byron!"—that he realized he was supposed to be embarrassed; the next time it happened, he had learned his lesson and turned red right away.

Acho que, na maioria das vezes, todo mundo merece mais de uma chance. Todos nós fazemos coisas de que nos arrependemos de vez em quando. Você só tem que carregá-las consigo.

There was a long history of children taken, the pretexts different but the reasons the same.

Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny was

Because telling you what really happened would be espousing un-American views, and we certainly wouldn't want that.

a moment, she said, in which we decide who we are.

Yet after seven years at Harvard—four as an undergrad, three and counting as a graduate student—nothing had changed. Without realizing why, he studied the most quintessentially American subject he could find—cowboys—but he never spoke of his parents, or his family. He still had few acquaintances and no friends. He still found himself shifting in his seat, as if at any moment someone might notice him and ask him to leave.

to uproot some otherness, something hated and feared.

Is there anything that gives you a deeper sense of satisfaction?

Mas o problema das regras (...) era que subentendiam um jeito errado e um jeito certo de fazer as coisas, quando, na verdade, na maior parte do tempo havia apenas jeitos, sendo que nenhum deles era exatamente certo ou errado e nada podia indicar com certeza de que lado da linha você estava.

As if memory were a bead that might spring from her fingers, clatter to the floor, roll into a crack and disappear.

The Three Pillars of PACT. Outlaws promotion of un-American values and behavior. Requires all citizens to report potential threats to our society. And there, beneath Sadie's finger: Protects children from environments espousing harmful views.

They settle on her with their dark wings then, nearly suffocating her: all of her many mistakes of motherhood.