shawnee’s Reviews > Interior Chinatown > Status Update

“She says that telling a love story is something one person does. Being in love takes both of them. Putting her on a pedestal is just a different way of being alone.”

“They took him away from her. He is lost now, in his work, in who they made him. Distant. Cold, perfectionist.”

i think i might be realizing that i have parental issues of the father kind

"There are a few years when you make almost all of your important memories. And then you spend the next few decades reliving them."

i have to take a pause -- i cannot handle getting all existential right now

“Some of the happiest times of your life were when your mother was dead, because you knew it meant she would be home for six weeks, you would have her all to yourself in the afternoons.”

i don’t like this book bringing up things i don’t like to think about :,)

“You keep thinking about Old Fong. Not that he died alone. Not that he died naked, or wet, or with soap on half his body. That he died waiting for his son’s phone call. That he lived, absolutely sure that one person in the world would always care, would always remember to check in on him. And then in his last moment, he was unsure of whether that was still true.”

someone sedate meeee

"The second floor is where your folks live. You should stop in....You should be a better son. For a moment. But it won't be a moment. It'll be more. It will be guilt and that heavy feeling, it will be a deep sigh, it will be heavy and unspoken and you don't know if you can do that right now."

sick to my stomach

"If you get Older Brother drunk enough...he will show you knife tricks that will leave you laughing and scared shitless at the same time and he will do it effortlessly, knife in one hand, beer in the other, his long hair looking cool."

now, we don't have time to unpack all that...

"Your relationship having turned into a pantomime, a series of gestures in a well-worn scene, played out again and again, any underlying feeling having long since been obviated by emotional muscle memory..."

ouch,,,