Quotes from work

The Joy Luck Club

“Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.”

“If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too?”

“We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable.
-Suyuan”

“Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love?”

“If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever.
-An-mei”

“Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else's joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.”

“I won't be what I'm not.
-Jing-mei”

“Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.”

“Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine.”

“I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control.”

“Now that I'm angry at Harold, it's hard to remember what was so remarkable about him.”

“After the gold was removed from my body I felt lighter, more free. They say this is what happens if you lack metal. You begin to think as an independent person.”

“I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?”

“For woman is yin, the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.”

“It is because I had so much joy that I came to have so much hate.”

“On the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mother's case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow.”

“I saw what I had been fighting for: it was for me, a scared child…”

“That was the night, in the kitchen, that I realized I was no better than who I was… And I no longer felt angry at Waverly. I felt tired and foolish, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind and discover there was no one there.”

“Look at this face. Do you see my foolish hope?”