Quotes by Lisa See

Perhaps he was afraid as I was that wed be caught. Or perhaps he was breathing me in just as I was letting him come into my lungs, my eyes, my heart.

Every day Fu-shee, the smaller children, and I fan out in the hills around Green Dragon to strip trees of their bark and leaves, dig up roots and search for wild grass. Well eat anything, and we have. But you cant eat a leather belt like its a crisp cucumber. You soak it, boil it, and chew on it for days.

Our words had to be circumspect. We could not write anything too negative about our circumstances. This was tricky, since the very form of a married womans letter needed to include the usual complaints -- that we were pathetic, powerless, worked to the bone, homesick, and sad. We were supposed to speak directly about our feelings without appearing ungrateful, no-account, or unfilial.

He was in my hair, my eyes, my fingers, my heart. I day-dreamed about what he was doing, thinking, seeing, smelling, feeling. I could not eat for thoughts of him.

I am old enough to know only too well my good and bad qualities, which were often one and the same. For my entire life I longed for love. I knew it was not right for me - as a girl and later as a woman - to want or expect it, but I did, and this unjustified desire has been at the root of every problem I have experienced in my life.

People come in and out of our lives, and the true test of friendship is whether you can pick back up right where you left off the last time you saw each other.

“Everyone knows that part of the spirit descends to the afterworld, while part of it remains with the family, but we have a special belief about the spirit of a young woman who has died before her marriage that goes contrary to this. She comes back to prey upon other unmarried girls--not to scare them but to take them to the afterworld with her so she might have company.”

“If it is perfectly acceptable for a widow to disfigure herself or commit suicide to save face for her husbands family, why should a mother not be moved to extreme action by the loss of a child or children? We are their caretakers. We love them. We nurse them when they are sick. . . But no woman should live longer than her children. It is against the law of nature. If she does, why wouldnt she wish to leap from a cliff, hang from a branch, or swallow lye?”