Bliss Montage Quotes

“They were the type of family that camouflaged their wealth in outdoor apparel and camping gear.”
― Ling Ma

“During the years I lived alone, even in my self-imposed solitude there had been a part of myself I was afraid of. I worked too much, as if it were the only thing, to diminishing returns. Left to my own devices, there was a streak of masochism in my single-minded, obsessive habits. I didn't exercise that much, but when I did, it was in gruesome marathons of overexertion. I didn't eat enough, and when I did, it was in wild, sobering feasts, remembering that I even had a body. I made myself sick. Unregulated, I would have eventually destroyed myself. Yet even knowing this didn't motivate me to change my ways.”
― Ling Ma

“I gave my protaganoist everything he secretly wanted. He idealizes his past in his homeland. And so, when he returns, I put everything back the way he remembered. Of course, it becomes nightmarish for him. Because there is no such thing as a real return.”
― Ling Ma

“The Husband is a resting place. He is a chair. Sometimes I drape myself over him and I get the physical comfort of not being alone.”
― Ling Ma

“An ideology defined only by what it opposes is doomed to be defined by that exact thing”
― Ling Ma

“Her apartment was decorated with zealous care, in the manner of a young person who believed their tastes defined them”
― Ling Ma

“It doesn't take much to come into your own; all it takes is someone's gaze. It's not totally accurate to say that I felt seen. It was more than that: Beheld by her, I learned how to become myself. Her interest actualized me.”
― Ling Ma

“It doesn't take much to convince yourself that you're doing okay, just some discretionary income and a regularity to your days.”
― Ling Ma

“I had begun writing my novel when I was in my twenties, and by the time I was published, I was in my mid-thirties. The person who entered the dream was not the same one who awoke from it. I had overslept, only to find that, in the interim, friends had moved to the suburbs, had begun families. Their lives had progressed while my life had been frozen, was just now thawing.”
― Ling Ma

“Especially the deep, post-holiday extremes of late January and February, when, no longer buoyed by festivities and merriments, you're confronted with the empty expanse of a new year, discarded resolutions in your wake, resigned to your own inability to change.”
― Ling Ma

“When I think about Y now, I think less about the beginning than about the end, which is where all my feelings have now pooled, having rolled downward toward the inevitable end.”
― Ling Ma

“How she appreciated his clear, straightforward lecture style; and how, unlike other faculty, he never wielded his knowledge as a weapon against his students. She lacked the finesse in the moment to convey this.”
― Ling Ma

“It was to his credit, maybe, that nothing had ever transpired between them. Maybe he had wanted her to initiate it, absolving him of liability. But she never did. She was content with the faint affect of romance, rather than its realization.”
― Ling Ma

“If something is not what you want now, then how do you know it's something you'll want in the future?”
― Ling Ma

“Left to my own devices, there was a streak of masochism in my single-minded, obsessive habits. I didn't exercise much, but when I did, it was in gruesome marathons of overexertion. I didn't eat enough, and when I did it was in wild, sobering feasts, remembering that I even had a body. I made myself sick. Unregulated, I would have eventually destroyed myself. Yet even knowing this didn't motivate me to change my ways.”
― Ling Ma

“If being exactly yourself meant you had to suffer the loneliness of being unlike anyone else, he seemed not to mind.”
― Ling Ma