Reading Cat > Reading Cat's Quotes

“The bad news: There is no key to the universe. The good news: It was never locked.”
― Swami Beyondananda

“Broken Wind believed that we are traumatized as babies by intestinal gas or colic. The great shaman invented a technique called "gastral projection" to help release these traumas. His philosophy was simple: "To air is human ... but to really cut one loose is divine.”
― Swami Beyondananda

“He studied with the guru of rock n’ roll, Baba Oom Mow Mow, who taught his own version of the Golden Rule: "Do wop unto others as you would have them do wop unto you.”
― Swami Beyondananda

“His accelerated path to yogihood hit a dead end when his kundalini exploded in a crowded department store. No one else was injured, but Swami caught an inflection which left him with a permanent East Indian accent.”
― Swami Beyondananda

“It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance.”
― Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

“Its important to be comfortable with uncertainty.”
― Xiaolu Guo

“About time, what I really learned from studying English is: time is different with timing.
I understand the difference of these two words so well. I understand falling in love with the right person in the wrong timing could be the greatest sadness in a person's entire life.”
― Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

“In China, we say: 'There are many dreams in a long night.' It has been a long night, but I don't know if I want to continue the dreams. It feels like I am walking on a little path, both sides are dark mountains and valleys. I am walking towards a little light in the distance. Walking, and walking, I am seeing that light diminishing. I am seeing myself walk towards the end of the love, the sad end.
I love you more than I loved you before. I love you more than I should love you. But I must leave. I am losing myself. It is painful that I can't see myself. It is time for me to say those words you kept telling me recently. 'Yes, I agree with you. We can't be together.”
― Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

“But why people need privacy? Why privacy is important? In China, every family live together, grandparents, parents, daughter, son and their relatives too. Eat together and share everything, talk about everything. Privacy make people lonely. Privacy make family fallen apart.”
― Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

“People always say it's harder to heal a wounded heart than a wounded body. Bullshit. It's exactly the opposite—a wounded body takes much longer to heal. A wounded heart is nothing but ashes of memories. But the body is everything. The body is blood and veins and cells and nerves. A wounded body is when, after leaving a man you’ve lived with for three years, you curl up on your side of the bed as if there’s still somebody beside you. That is a wounded body: a body that feels connected to someone who is no longer there.”
― Xiaolu Guo, Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth

“I thought English is a strange language. Now I think French is even more strange. In France, their fish is poisson, their bread is pain, and their pancake is crepe. Pain and poison and crap. That's what they have every day.”
― Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

“Huizi would say, never look back to the past. Never regret. Even if there is emptiness ahead, never look back.”
― Xiaolu Guo, Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth

“Love', this English word: like other English words it has tense. 'Loved' or 'will love' or 'have loved'. All these tenses mean Love is time-limited thing. Not infinite. It only exist in particular period of time. In Chinese, love is '爱' (ai). It has no tense. No past and future. Love in Chinese means a being, a situation, a circumstance. Love is existence, holding past and future.”
― Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

“I wanted to hide away and write. I wanted to meet characters who would climb up my pen. I wanted to create a completely new world, inventing everyone and everything.”
― Xiaolu Guo, Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth

“Never look back to the past, never regret, even if there is emptiness ahead.' But I couldn't help it. Sometimes I would rather look back if it meant that I could feel something in my heart, even something sad. Sadness was better than emptiness.”
― Xiaolu Guo, Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth

“Maybe being their child simply means that I will always feel the weight of their past.”
― Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do

“Má leaves me but I'm not alone, and a terrifying thought creeps into my head. Family is now something I have created and not just something I was born into.”
― Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do

“Proximity and closeness are not the same.”
― Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do

“To understand how my father became the way he was, I had to learn what happened to him as a little boy. It took a long time to learn the right questions to ask.”
― Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do

“This - not any particular piece of Vietnamese culture - is my inheritance: the inexplicable need and extraordinary ability to run when the shit hits the fan. My refugee reflex.”
― Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do

“Every casualty in war is someone's grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, brother, sister, child, lover.”
― Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do

“How much of me is my own, and how much is stamped into my blood and bone, predestined?”
― Thi Bui

“I remember being excited about seeing snow for the very first time.”
― Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do

“That first week of parenting was the hardest week of my life, and the only time I ever felt called upon to be HEROIC.”
― Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do

“This — not any particular piece of Vietnamese culture — is my inheritance, the inexplicable need and extraordinary ability to run when the shit hits the fan. My refugee reflex.”
― Thi Bui