Ella > Recent Status Updates

‘Alice follows the music. It’s a brittle strand of notes amid the city’s crowded symphony, and she moves with cautious attire, afraid that one wrong turn will cut the cord, seen the melody skittering away…’ p282

“We are rose that grew in midnight soil,” he says, eyes bright as candles now. “Our thorns are sharp enough to prick. We are watered by life, and with its bounty, our roots grow deep, our blooms unmarred by age. In fact, for us, time fortifies, renders us more noble. We are not monster, no mean thing. We are nature’s finest flower.” p149

‘That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world and hoping someone else understands.’p537

‘Reality was, after all, just so malleable- facts could be forgotten, truths suppressed, lives seen only from one angle like a trick prism, if only one resolved never to look too closely.’ p260

‘… But the future, vague as it was frightening, was easily ignored for now; it paled so against the brilliance of the present.’ p257

‘… For simple ink on paper was not enough to describe this golden afternoon; the warmth of uncomplicated friendship, all fights forgotten, all sins forgiven; the sunlight melting away the memory of the classroom chill; the sticky taste of lemon on their touches and their startled, delighted relief.’ p238

‘… They could no longer look at the world and not see stories, histories, layered everywhere like centuries’ worth of sediment.’ p169

‘He pulled on his English accent like a new coat, adjusted everything he could about himself to make it fit, and, within weeks, wore it with comfort. In weeks, no one was asking him to speak a few words in Chinese for their enter-tainment. In weeks, no one seemed to remember he was Chinese at all.’ p20

‘It had not registered until now that he would not step foot on his native shore again for many years, if ever. He wasn't sure what to make of this fact. The word loss was inadequate. Loss just meant a lack, meant something was missing, but it did not encompass the totality of this severance, this terrifying un-anchoring from all that he'd ever known.’ p17

‘… He meant that we shall have an open mind, and not leg a little bit of truth check the rush of a big truth, like a small rock does a railway truck. We get the small truth first. Good! We keep him, and we value him; but all the same we must not let him think himself all the truth in the universe’