Serena Zhang > Serena's Quotes

“They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.”
― Tim O'Brien

“I survived, but it's not a happy ending.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“you're never more alive than when you're almost dead.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do. ”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”
― Jimi Hendrix

“Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“But this too is true: stories can save us.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Sometimes the bravest thing in the world was to sit through the night and feel the cold in your bones.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“How crazy it was that people who were so incredibly alive could get so incredibly dead”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter’s tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“Ying-ying, you have tiger eyes. They gather fire in the day. At night they shine golden.”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“You can't stay in the dark for too long. Something inside you starts to fade, and you become like a starving person, crazy-hungry for light.”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“How I saw in her my own true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside my bones... Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.
This is how a daughter honors her mother. It is shou so deep it is in your bones. The pain of the flesh is nothing. The pain you must forget. Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother before her. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh. ”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace." - Baba”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“For you, a thousand times over”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“All great and precious things are lonely.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland