Ruyu Wang

“There is no weapon more dangerous than a wound, and being wounded there are things we have all done that we would almost would rather die that face into, but no one heals what they refuse to look at. So when asked if I believe in “good people”, I say I believe in people who are committed to knowing their own wounds intimately. People who read their wound’s diaries, who follow their wounds out windows, down ladders asking “Where are you going? What do you need? How can I intervene before a cruel thing is done or said?”
― Andrea Gibson, Take Me With You

“No one believed that the author was the Chinese who received the prize. At the end of the last century, fleeing the scourge of yellow fever that devastated Panama during the construction of the railroad between the two oceans, he had arrived with many others who stayed here until they died, living in Chinese, reproducing in Chinese, and looking so much alike that no one could tell one from the other. At first, there were no more than ten, some of them with their wives and children and edible dogs, but in a few years, four narrow streets in the slums along the port were overflowing with other unexpected Chinese, who came into the country without leaving a trace in the customs record....In the popular view, they were divided into two kinds: bad Chinese and good Chinese. The bad ones were the ones in the lugubrious restaurants along the water front where one was as likely to eat like a King as to die a sudden death at the table, sitting before a plate of rat meat with sunflowers, and which were thought to be nothing more than fronts for white slavery, and many other kinds of trafficking. The good ones were the Chinese in the laundries, heirs of a sacred knowledge, who returned one's shirts cleaner than new, with collars and cuffs like recently ironed communion wafers.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“Increasingly at Southern airports, instead of a “good-bye” or “thank-you,” cashiers are apt to say, “Have a blessed day.” This can make you feel like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne. “Get it off me!” I always want to scream. “Quick, before I start wearing ties with short-sleeved shirts!”
― David Sedaris, Calypso

“Diseases don’t ruin lives just because they rot off noses. They destroy people if the rest of society isolates them and treats them as undeserving of help and respect.”
― Jennifer Wright, Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them