Monique Vic

“A year is a year anywhere, a day is a day for everyone, and yet with a few tricks these archivists make others believe that they have packed something into their days, something precious, enviable, everlasting, that is not available to everyone.”
― Yiyun Li, The Book of Goose

“But the world I—no, not I, Fabienne and I—had given them: Was it real? How much of it was real? We cannot measure a world with a ruler or a scale, and conclude that it is two inches, or two ounces, short of being real. All worlds, fabricated or not, are equally real. And so they are equally unreal. If I told my parents that in Paris I was posing for the press to photograph, they would say I was making up stories no one would believe. Paris was not real to them. Neither was my fame. The world Fabienne and I made together: it was as real as our nonsense.”
― Yiyun Li, The Book of Goose

“People often forget that it is always a gamble to be a mother; I am not a gambler.”
― Yiyun Li, The Book of Goose

“Happiness is to spend every day without craning one’s neck to look forward to tomorrow, next month, next year, and without holding out one’s hands to stop every day from becoming yesterday.”
― Yiyun Li, The Book of Goose