Quotes from Lisa See

How can the moon be scooped from the water's surface, or flowers be plucked from the void?

You can always count on people to crowded your party when you're in glory but you should never dream of people sending you charcoal in the cold.

As obident as dogs and as stupid as water buffalo.

I finally understand what the poets have written. In spring, moved to passion; in autumn only regret.

When you do things in a soft way, you make the other people believe they've thought up something to do for you, when actually you're directing them." Later, Ruth

When you're held underwater, you think only of air. I remember how I felt about Shanghai in the days after our lives changed - how streets that had once seemed exciting suddenly stank of nightsoil, how beautiful women suddenly were nothing more than girls with three holes, how all the money and prosperity suddenly rendered everything forlon, dissolute and futile. The way I see Los Angeles and Chinatown during these difficult and frightening days couldn't be more different.

We had a meeting where we were supposed to learn how to respond to jerks who ask things like When did you know you were adopted? Most people picture a scene where the parents sit you down and you find out who you are. I didn't need that meeting to know how to answer, because all I had to do was look in the mirror. When people ask me that question, I always say, When did you find out you weren't adopted? How do you know your mother is your birth mother?

I had to hold on to my anger and my bitterness as a way of honoring those I'd lost.

We're told that men are strong and brave, but I think women know how to endure, accept defeat, and bear physical and mental agony much better than men.

Every mother must leave her children to work, and every mother suffers, but we do it.

But anger can be dangerous and have unintended consequences.

spring comes, flowers fragrant, bird sings.

It's said that great sorrow is no more than a reflection of one's capacity for great joy. I see it from the opposite direction. I'm happy, but there's an empty space inside me that will never stop suffering from the loss of Yan-yeh.

The lotus symbolizes purity, because it rises out of the mud but looks pristine.

People are shaped by the earth and water around them.

Your mother will always exist in you. She will give you strength wherever you go.

No man was built to shoulder the full weight of feeding and caring for his family. That was why he had a wife and daughters.

Her house is the nest where she hides the joy, laughter, sorrows, and

But when people suggested the haenyeo start using oxygen tanks, she, along with other divers around the island, refused. "Everything we do must be natural," she'd told the collective, "otherwise we'll harvest too much, deplete our wet fields, and earn nothing." There, again, balance.

I grew up believing that rice was to nourish and that tea was to heal. Now I understand that tea is also to connect and to dream. That seduction is deeper and more profound than could happen with any man.

When she's in the sea, she's in the womb of the world.

Peony, think of your own feet when you do this. You know how the toes are tucked under and how your mid-foot is folded in on itself? We accomplish this by rolling the bones under the foot as if you were rolling a sock. Can you do that?

Danseuse routine and my fame grew. I could walk into a

What was the purpose of being wrapped like a present if you had no feelings for the person you were being given to?