Da Chen > Quotes

“Do you still want to be a farmer?' Mom asked.
I shook my head.
'Then study hard. You can choose your future, your sisters and brother can't. You're lucky. If they had blisters like yours, they would still have to be there till the last stem was harvested. It's their life.”
― Da Chen, Colors of the Mountain: A Memoir

“A poor child knew what it meant to be poor. We didn't ask for much, and sometimes we didn't even ask.”
― Da Chen, Colors of the Mountain: A Memoir

“Writers write for various reasons. I write because my heart demands so. There is so much freedom in the simple act of sitting there, holding up my hands, waiting to pound on the computer keyboard, waiting for words to pour from the tips of my fingers and compose the melody of life from the faded tapestry of my past.”
― Da Chen

“had simply wanted them to be ignorant, so they wouldn’t be aware of what a fiend he really was.”
― Da Chen, Colors of the Mountain: A Memoir

“Summer was his foe with all its heat, noise, plump water, and bladed grasses belonging to the flowers, mosquitos, frogs, and twittering cicadas—little lives and little bugs. All he deserved was the silence of a chilling night, the detachment of cold winter. He saw himself as a dwindling man of winter.”
― Da Chen, Brothers