Joy Luck Club Quotes

And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every direction.

I have always known a thing before it happens.

I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?

On the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mother’s case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow.

I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind. -Lindo

what you don’t know, you don’t miss

I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you’re in control.

Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.

And I remember wondering why it was that eating something good could make me feel so terrible, while vomiting something terrible could make me feel so good.

Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.

For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.

And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.

Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.

My mother had a look on her face that I’ll never forget. It was one of complete despair and horror, for losing Bing, for being so foolish as to think she could use faith to change fate.

In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.

I saw what I had been fighting for: it was for me, a scared child.

We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.