Peter Ho Davies > Quotes

“(Dimly he senses this is somehow the point of the internet: to spread shame, but so broadly, so thinly, like a light coat of varnish, that we hardly notice it anymore, until we all just glow faintly with it.)”
― Peter Ho Davies, A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

“Asking for sympathy is just another way of asking for permission.”
― Peter Ho Davies, A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

“All the years of ritual—undressing and dressing, diaper changes, potty time, bath time, tooth brushing, reading, hugs and kisses—are so exhausting. If they don’t fall asleep beside him, whoever is on bedtime duty stumbles downstairs, announces wearily, “And that concludes today’s parenting.” Until the next day, and the next and the next. As if it were a curse and not a blessing. As if it really were forever.”
― Peter Ho Davies, A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

“Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself,” according to Anaïs Nin (herself the author of several abortions). But what if it’s not a lie? And what if the someone is you?”
― Peter Ho Davies, A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

“It won’t necessarily last, they know, but they cherish it all the more for that. You only know luck by its opposite.”
― Peter Ho Davies, A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

“This is what men will never understand, she realizes...Their dishonor, men's dishonor, can always be redeemed, defeat followed by victory, capture by escape, escape by capture. Up hill and down dale. But women are dishonored once and for all. Their only hope is to hide it. To keep it to themselves.”
― Peter Ho Davies, The Welsh Girl

“Maybe it's a kind of freedom too. To stay home.”
― Peter Ho Davies, The Welsh Girl

“sniffing the musty air and peering up at the blotchy continents of mildew, the parchment-colored walls rising to the long ridge above,”
― Peter Ho Davies, The Welsh Girl

“He’s long used to his parents’ disapproval—of grades, career choices, girlfriends. What’s new is that now they’re dealing with his disapproval. He’d always thought them good parents—loving, stable, involved—and still does. It’s their anxiety, their defensiveness, their guilt, after all these years, that shakes him. Will that be us? he asks his wife, but they both know the answer already.”
― Peter Ho Davies, A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

“That war had almost torn the country in two, but the railroad, men said, had bound it back together, the tracks and ties like sutures to a wound, now fading to a scar.”
― Peter Ho Davies, The Fortunes

“The first Chinese star, they call her, and it's the qualifications that are crucial. First. Chinese. A star may play only him- or herself, but she is supposed to play a race. How can she be herself and represent millions, both at once? And who does she represent them to? To themselves or others? "Who does she thinks she is?" an outraged Nationalist critic has demanded. She wishes she could say.

Not a star, then. A star gives off its own light. Another celestial body, a moon, reflecting others' light.”
― Peter Ho Davies, The Fortunes