Monique Vic

“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

“The journalists and critics, mindless people, refused to see that the distance between life and death was always shorter than people are willing to understand. One step further, one breath skipped - it does not take much to slip from life into death.

From life to life? That’s a long way. The cousins of my geese, the wild ones, fly over a continent. People leave their homes for new homes, new cities, new countries.”
― Yiyun Li, The Book of Goose

“Few of us would make a fool of ourselves in pressing the animals to give us serious answers about their lives, but we do that all the time to other people.”
― 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