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“She gave me a puzzle in a box. She put the pieces together patiently, one by one, and completed the picture of me.”
― Miaojin Qiu (邱妙津)

“I wish I could fall in love with a man, but there are too many beautiful women.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“She had sought me out. I knew it would happen. Even if I had switched to a different section, she would have sought me out all the same. She, who hid in the crowd, who didn’t want anyone to see her behind her veil of averted eyes and aloofness. When I stepped forward, she came out, too. And she pointed and said, revealing a child’s wanton smile: “That’s the one I want.” And like a potted sunflower that had just been sold to a customer, I was taken away. There was no way to refuse. This, from a beautiful girl that I was already deeply, viscerally attracted to. Things were getting good.”
― Miaojin Qiu (邱妙津)

“People in this city are manufactured and canned, raised for the sole purpose of taking tests and making money, The eighteen-year-old me went through the high-grade production line and was processed in three years, despite the fear that I was pure carrion inside.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“She’d ask me why I was sitting next to her, and I’d say because you’re smart. She’d also ask me why her. I’d say because you’re so beautiful. She said maybe you don’t know that I have nothing to offer you. I said doesn’t matter, other women don’t want me. She said you can’t handle me. I said let’s cross that bridge when we get there.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“Wielding the ax of cruelty against life, against myself, against others. It’s the rule of animal instinct, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics—and the axis of all four. And the comma that punctuated being twenty-two.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“I devoured all kinds of books for tortured souls. Started collecting issues of the independence movement’s weekly. Studied up on political game theory, an antidote to my spiritual reading. It made me feel like an outsider, which became my way of recharging. At the break of dawn, around six or seven, like a nocturnal creature afraid of the light, I’d finally lay my head—which by then was spilling over with thoughts—down onto the comforter.

That’s how it went when things were good. Most of the time, however, I didn’t eat a single thing all night. Didn’t shower. Couldn’t get out of bed. Didn’t write in my journal or talk. Didn’t read a single page or register the sound of another human being. All day long, I’d cry myself sick into my pillow. Sleep was just another luxury.

Didn’t want anyone around. People were useless to me. Didn’t need anyone. I started hurting myself and getting into all sorts of trouble.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“It was clear from that moment on, we’d never be equals. How could we, with me under the table, scrambling to summon a different me, the one she would worship and put on a pedestal? No way was I coming out.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“Besides, as they say, if the floodwaters are rushing straight toward you, what are you going to do to stop them? This was how she treated me, for no apparent reason.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“A human being has only so much in them, and yet you must learn through experience, until you finally reach the maddening conclusion that the world wrote you off a long time ago, or accept the prison sentence that your crime is your existence. And the world keeps turning as if nothing had happened.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“No need to be silent. Are you sinking into some corner of your melancholy? In my heart, I called out to you.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“Sometimes writing was like finding a parking spot: Just as I was about to give up, I managed to achieve a perfect fit, thanks to a bit of skillful maneuvering. Other times it was like examining food that had been left sitting out for so long that ants and cockroaches had gotten to it. On other occasions it was like a major year-end cleaning where I was forced to throw something away because I couldn’t find anywhere to put it. And still other times, it was like trading in a used car for a new one: I didn’t give it a second thought.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“She was a vine extending one slender, delicate branch toward my window, hoping I was the sky, not knowing that on the other side, there was no shade, and not much sunshine, either.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“She closed her eyes. Tears fell from her eyelashes. Every last fiber in my body felt as if it were being twisted and wrung. I’d wrenched our relationship to the breaking point and watched it split apart. I know I made you suffer. I’ll never cut you off again. I spit out the words that were caught in my throat. She let out a laugh, and then, as if she’d finally been torn open, a cry of pain. To paint a picture of our embrace, I’d almost have to use her blood and guts.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“That guardedness was a by-product of my lifelong socialization, of other people labeling me and putting me in a box.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“I knew there was no way I could protect her from the real world or from being yanked around by the tail. That said, I’d still step in and save her regardless. I was such a shitty human being, why not take advantage of her state of disgrace and kick her while she was down? No matter what kind of trouble she was in, I’d run over in an instant to toss a rope down and pull her back to safety. Now that I’d shown myself to be blindly at her beck and call, she was beaming again.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“She had tied me up with wire and left me to die. But when all was said and done, she wanted me to die in her arms. So before entering my dreams every night, she yanked the wire tight to make sure I was still there.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“On how to love well: Instead of embracing a romantic ideal, you must confront the meaning of every great love that has shattered, shard by shard.”
― Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin

“The fact that certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation, thus moving from one pole of the contradiction to the other... Theirs is a fundamental role, and has been throughout the history of this struggle. It happens, however, that as they cease to be exploiters or indifferent spectators or simply the heirs of exploitation and move to the side of the exploited, they almost always bring with them the marks of their origin: their prejudices and their deformations, which include a lack of confidence in the people's ability to think, to want, and to know. Accordingly, these adherents to the people's cause constantly run the risk of falling into a type of generosity as malefic as that of the oppressors. The generosity of the oppressors is nourished by an unjust order, which must be maintained in order to justify that generosity. Our converts, on the other hand, truly desire to transform the unjust order; but because of their background they believe that they must be the executors of the transformation. They talk about the people, but they do not trust them; and trusting the people is the indispensable precondition for revolutionary change. A real humanist can be identified more by his trust in the people, which engages him in their struggle, than by a thousand actions in their favor without that trust.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the 'rejects of life.' It is not the tyrannized who initiate despotism, but the tyrants. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating their own as well). Force is used not by those who have become weak under the preponderance of the strong, but by the strong who have emasculated them.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from being so.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“One cannot conceive of objectivity without subjectivity.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“The pursuit of full humanity, however, cannot be carried out in isolation or individualism, but only in fellowship and solidarity;”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“The man or woman who proclaims devotion to the cause of liberation yet is unable to enter into communion with the people, whom he or she continues to regard as totally ignorant, is grievously self-deceived. The convert who approaches the people but feels alarm at each step they take, each doubt they express, and each suggestion they offer, and attempts to impose his "status," remains nostalgic towards his origins.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“the former oppressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed. Conditioned by the experience of oppressing others, any situation other than their former seems to them like oppression. Formerly, they could eat, dress, wear shoes, be educated, travel, and hear Beethoven; while millions did not eat, had no clothes or shoes, neither studied nor travelled, much less listened to Beethoven. Any restriction on this way of life, in the name of the rights of the community, appears to the former oppressors as a profound violation of their individual rights – although they had no respect for the millions who suffered and died of hunger, pain, sorrow, and despair. For the oppressors, 'human beings' refers only to themselves; other people are 'things'.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“The oppressed, having internalised the image of the oppressor and adopted his guideline are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from beings so. Attempting to be more human, individually, leads to having more, egotistical, a form of dehumanization.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“For the oppressors, “human beings” refers only to themselves; other people are “things.” For the oppressors, there exists only one right: their right to live in peace, over against the right, not always even recognized, but simply conceded, of the oppressed to survival. And they make this concession only because the existence of the oppressed is necessary to their own existence.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“Any situation in which A objectively exploits B or hinders his pursuit of self-affirmation as a responsible person is an act of oppression. Such a situation in itself constitutes violence, even when sweetened by false generosity, because it interferes with the individual's ontological and historical vocation to be more fully human. With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed