Quotes from Celeste Ng

Sometimes, just when you think everything's gone, you find a way.

simply went on as if she'd never existed. As he stands there, he knows the photos

plugging her ears by filling her head with dreams.

she returns in sudden flashes. Like scraps of half-remembered dreams.

His mind, for the moment, gone blissfully blank.

Removed. Three years ago, it says. Someone complained, probably. That it encouraged pro-PAO sentiment, or something. Some of our donors have—opinions. On China, or in this case, anything that vaguely resembles it.

In the rearview mirror she caught a glimpse of her reflection, and instead of being embarrassed to see herself stripped so naked and vulnerable, she admired the pale gleam of her own skin against the white of her bra.

Then, as they cross the street back toward the dorm, Bird sees it on the ground: spray-painted, blood-red against the asphalt, right in the center of the intersection. The size of a car, impossible to miss. A heart, he realizes, just like the banner in Brooklyn. And circling it this time, a ring of words. bring back our missing hearts.

If she ran off to Washington to join the protests, where would she sleep? How would she stay safe? What would become of her classes, would she be expelled, could she still graduate and go to college?

The rush of things she wanted to say churned in her head.

On their old street, each house is a different drab shade: tan, dirty cream, the washed-out gray of tattered laundry: as if all the color has leached away since his childhood. Slope shouldered, listing slightly to one side, they resemble old ladies, their clothing grown shabby and loose.

And in English class, on a test, she wrote, Irony: a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things, and received an A.

in Mia's accepting presence she'd become curious and kind and open, as if under a magic spell. She had felt, finally, as if she could speak without immediately bumping into the hard shell of her sheltered life, as if she suddenly saw that the solid walls penning her in were actually bars, with spaces between them wide enough to slip through.

Why are they even here, Nath wonders, and when the service starts and they all crane their necks toward the coffin at the front, under the sassafras tree, he understands. They are drawn by the spectacle of sudden death.

Pearl glanced over her shoulder, in the universal reaction of all teenagers confronted by their parents in a public place

But already parts of her life were curtained off.

inquisitive chirp, a self that curled up at the edges.

Lucille Clifton, Adrienne Rich, Ada Limón,

She looked at him fiercely, almost a glare, and Moody saw that her eyes, which he'd thought were hazel, were a deep jade green. At that moment Moody had a sudden clear understanding of what had already happened that morning: his life had been divided into a before and an after, and he would always be comparing the two.

he forgets her voice sometimes; when he tries to summon it, it slips away like a shadow dissolving in the dark.

It seemed as vague and hazy as something she had done in a dream.

what might have caused those would never be clear. In time, many would dredge up old lists of rivalries, searching for someone to blame; they would settle, in a few years, on China, that perilous, perpetual yellow menace. Seeing its sabotage behind every stumble and fracture of the Crisis. But at first all they agreed on was this: it was the worst crisis since the 1980s, then since the Depression, and then they stopped making comparisons.

At that moment Moody had a sudden clear understanding of what had already happened that morning: his life had been divided into a before and an after, and he would always be comparing the two.

What would she have done if she'd been in that situation? Mrs. Richardson would ask herself this question over and over, before Michael's call and for weeks—and months—after. Each time, faced with this impossible choice, she came to the same conclusion. I would never have let myself get into that situation, she told herself. I would have made better choices along the way.