Sharon Lee

“What was there to complain about? A murdered wife? A sore back? The wrong grade copper? Living happened till it didn't. There was no choice in it. To say no to a new day would be unthinkable. So each morning you said yes, then stepped into the consequence.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“What sort of people are they, to act thus?' Yedigei asked aloud; he was deeply upset. 'Everything on earth is important to them, except death.' Yet this thought gave him no peace. 'If death is nothing to them, then it follows that life also has no value for them. What is their purpose in life? For what and how do they live?”
― Chingiz Aitmatov

“All that had taken place in many years of life at Boranly-Burannyi junction, all this great strain over a long time, all the troubles, difficulties and joys he had lived through - all this had to be expressed in a few words of farewell in the few minutes of laying to rest. How much, yet how little, is given to a man!”
― Chingiz Aitmatov, The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years

“Shanghai was not alone in holding postwar trials. They were held everywhere, and it is worth asking why. What was gained? They were less about reestablishing the rule of law than about creating what Tony Judt has tagged as "the postwar." The Second World War ended in 1945, but the postwar went on. This was an era in which the victors who had prevailed, sanctified by the sacrifice of those who had worked and fought for that victory, could not be questioned. This condition lasted for decades, perpetuated through curricula and public entertainment in an almost endless loop of self-congratulation that brooked no alternative. The Gaullists in France, the Communists in China, The Nationalists in Taiwan, and the list could go on: the war gave them the right to impose their terms on the people they ruled.”
― Timothy Brook, Great State: China and the World