Quotes from Julie Otsuka

They learned that they should always call the restaurant first. Do you serve Japanese?

Not once did we ever have the money to buy them a single toy. AND

For us, swimming is more than a pastime. It is our passion, our solace, our addition of choice. The one thing we look forward to, more than anything else. It's the only time I feel truly alive. It keeps us centered and focused. It slows down the gain process, it lowers our blood pressure, it improves our stamina, our memory, our lung capacity

BEYOND THE FARM, they'd heard, there were strange pale children who grew up entirely indoors and knew nothing of the fields and streams. Some of these children, they'd heard, had never even seen a tree.

Is it a blessing in disguise, or is it just a disguise? And if it's just a disguise, then what is it disguising?

We praised them when they were kind to others but told them not to expect to be rewarded for their good deeds. We scolded them whenever they tried to talk back. We taught them never to accept a handout. We taught them never to brag. We taught them everything we knew.

A fortune begins with a penny.

SOME SAID that the men had been put on trains and sent far away, over the mountains, to the coldest part of the country. Some said they were enemy collaborators and would be deported within days. Some said they had been shot. Many of us dismissed the rumors as rumors but found ourselves spreading them—wildly, recklessly, and seemingly against our own will—nonetheless. Others of us refused to speak of the missing men by day but at night they came to us in our dreams.

Many of us had lost everything and left saying nothing at all. All of us left wearing white numbered identification tags tied to our collars and lapels.

Soon we could barely recognize them. They were taller than we were, and heavier. They were loud beyond belief. I feel like a duck that's hatched goose's eggs.

The pool is located deep underground, in a large cavernous chamber many feet beneath the streets of our town. And every time, when she gets to your face, she looks as if she is about to speak.

There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported. And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them. — ECCLESIASTICUS 44:8–9 Barn

His father had promised to show him the world. They'd go to Egypt, he'd said, and climb the Pyramids. They'd go to China and take a nice long stroll along that Great Wall. They'd see the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Colosseum in Rome and at night, by the light of the stars, they'd glide through Venice in a black wooden gondola. The moon above, he sang, is yours and mine...

Niekas nelaimi karo.Visi pralaimi

Up there I'm just passing as me.

They had a confidence that we lacked. And much better hair. So many colors. And we regretted that we could not be more like them.

One of us continues to swim back and forth in her lane long after everyone else has gotten out, and when we call out her name - Alice, time's up! - the lifeguard lifts his hand and says, quietly, One more lap.

And at three o'clock in the morning, as they lie beside us peacefully slumbering away, we wake up in a cold sweat, cheeks flushed, teeth clenched, hearts pounding, wondering: How many more laps do we have left? One hundred? One thousand? Six? Ninety-four? Isn't there somebody out there who can give us a clue?

He put down his suitcase and looked at her. Did you...she said, Every day,he replied.

You keep it," he said.

Women are weak, but mothers are strong.

Women are weak, but mothers are strong.

And if anyone asks, you're Chinese. The boy had nodded. "Chinese," he whispered. "I'm Chinese." "And I," said the girl, "am the Queen of Spain." "In your dreams," said the boy. "In my dreams," said the girl, "I'm the King.

We lost weight and grew thin. We stopped bleeding. We stopped dreaming. We stopped wanting.