Zhang Ling > Quotes

“You were smart, but there were plenty of people in the world who were smarter than you, and cleverness is sometimes the biggest obstacle. Fortunately, you were also diligent and persistent. Diligence clips the wings of cleverness, allowing it to stay firmly on the ground. Persistence grinds away the sharp edges of cleverness, not allowing it to take shortcuts through things. Cleverness thus clipped can more fully penetrate the nature of things.”
― Ling Zhang, A Single Swallow

“In God’s eyes, a thousand years was like a day, and a day was like a thousand years. In the same way, one person was a universe, and perhaps the universe was a single person”
― Ling Zhang, A Single Swallow

“God and the bodhisattvas are useless,” she said. “They only control good people, not bad people.”
― Ling Zhang, A Single Swallow

“War is one world, and peace another. Each world has its own door, and they are not connected in any way.”
― Ling Zhang, A Single Swallow

“Diligence clips the wings of cleverness, allowing it to stay firmly on the ground. Persistence grinds away the sharp edges of cleverness, not allowing it to take shortcuts through things. Cleverness thus clipped can more fully penetrate the nature of things.”
― Ling Zhang, A Single Swallow

“Facing death is a form of bravery, but so is facing life.”
― Ling Zhang, A Single Swallow

“Everything that happens in this world happens for reasons suited to its particular time,” she said at last.”
― Ling Zhang, A Single Swallow

“Ferguson watched her walk out of the courtyard calmly, dust rising from the road with each firm step, her loosened hair shaking softly. This girl made all the women he’d ever known—even his mother, his sister, and his former girlfriend—seem pale and weak.”
― Ling Zhang, A Single Swallow

“instantly drying up the surging of her moistened womanhood.”
― Zhang Ling, Where Waters Meet

“What’s remembered gets a life, she read once in a book. She didn’t want to give that beast a life, but she couldn’t kill her memory either. Memory exists on its own terms and decides what life to give.”
― Zhang Ling, Where Waters Meet

“People believe what they choose to believe. Memory is subjective, so in that sense we are all gaslighting others somewhat when we assert our version of the past.”
― Zhang Ling, Where Waters Meet

“people eat dogs, dogs eat shit, and tea leaves eat fog.”
― Zhang Ling, A Single Swallow

“for everything she wanted, there would be something else she had to give up, as the price.”
― Zhang Ling, Where Waters Meet

“When my father was killed, the Japanese people I’d heard about became real to me, and my sense of nationalistic enmity became a blood feud.”
― Ling Zhang, A Single Swallow

“All at once, I saw both her fragility and her bravery. She’d been wounded so severely that she couldn’t even face the name in a book, but she was braver than any man, even at the sight of blood and blade. I finally found the way to heal Stella. She didn’t need comfort, and she didn’t need to forget. She needed to save herself by saving others.”
― Zhang Ling, A Single Swallow

“The worst disaster has already happened. What’s there to fear now?” She didn’t realize that her own destruction had just begun. There were still many disasters lined up along the road ahead, all waiting for her.”
― Zhang Ling, A Single Swallow

“This troubled world was like a knife that didn’t even recognize its own family and cut childhood short.”
― Ling Zhang, A Single Swallow

“Later, I eventually came to realize the truth about such faultfinding. When examined under a microscope, one will see the pores even in the skin of an angel.”
― Ling Zhang, A Single Swallow

“In the sphere of marital science, one needs chemistry to kick open the door, but after that, it’s physics that governs the running of it.”
― Zhang Ling, Where Waters Meet

“When you can’t sleep, your mind flies through countless things you thought you’d forgotten, things that have nothing to do with the present. For”
― Zhang Ling, A Single Swallow

“the living half was unaware of the dead half—it was thriving, a luscious green, without remorse. It didn’t know the chaotic world we lived in. The days were like water, always flowing forward, not looking back, and waiting for no one. Not even these troubled days could stop it.”
― Zhang Ling, A Single Swallow

“They were sizing her up, betting she wouldn’t dare speak, since she risked losing face if she did. But they had made a mistake. They had pushed her too far.”
― Zhang Ling, A Single Swallow

“Everything that happens in this world happens for reasons suited to its particular time,”
― Ling Zhang, A Single Swallow

“On the way there, she’d planned everything she would say at this moment, but with everything that had happened since, it had disappeared. She clenched her fists, digging her nails into her palms, and the sharp pain gradually roused her, bringing the words back to her mind.”
― Zhang Ling, A Single Swallow

“I could use that time to publish a statement in the newspaper to break off my relationship with Ah”
― Ling Zhang, A Single Swallow

“Everyone who tells a secret hopes the listener will keep it. But sadly, no one’s mouth is a clamshell, and rumors leak everywhere.”
― Ling Zhang, A Single Swallow

“Waking up in the morning and putting on the old, stinky knitted socks, she found herself with a colossal hangover. Her misery, with nowhere to go, was ready to explode.”
― Zhang Ling, Where Waters Meet

“Time is a miraculous thing. It can wear down the thorns of emotion, gradually eroding them to dust, and from this dust, a new sprout grows. That sprout is the power of life.”
― Zhang Ling, A Single Swallow

“Her life, all sixteen years of it, was a cancellation process, love canceled out by guilt, pride by shame, the future by the past.”
― Zhang Ling, Where Waters Meet

“Under the double protection of silence and darkness, he could quietly digest his shame on his own.”
― Zhang Ling, A Single Swallow