Asian Literature Quotes

“All of these things, however, were but like methadone to a heroin addict. They only masked the withdrawal pains without satisfying the addiction. So even as they tried truly to break up many times, they always found their way back to each other.”
― L. M. Weeks, Bottled Lightning

“Kumakura’s use of the word sensei, reserved for professionals, including doctors and lawyers, but which Japanese doctors tried to reserve to themselves, was tacit acknowledgment that Kumakura knew the hierarchy had changed.”
― L. M. Weeks, Bottled Lightning

“Cars slowed to a crawl as drivers rubber-necked to watch her ride by. She was a glamorous hazard to traffic safety.”
― L. M. Weeks, Bottled Lightning

“Mr. Wu, is it true that you have an internalized sense of inferiority?

That because on the one hand you, for obvious reasons, have not been and can never be fully assimilated into mainstream, i.e., White America—

And on the other hand neither do you feel fully justified in claiming solidarity with other historically and currently oppressed groups. That while your community’s experience in the United States has included racism on the personal and the institutional levels, including but not limited to: immigration quotas, actual federal legislation expressly excluding people who look like you from entering the country. Legislation that was in effect for almost a century. Antimiscegenation laws. Discriminatory housing policies. Alien land laws and restrictive covenants. Violation of civil liberties including internment. That despite all of that, you somehow feel that your oppression, because it does not include the original American sin—of slavery—that it will never add up to something equivalent. That the wrongs committed against your ancestors are incommensurate in magnitude with those committed against Black people in America. And whether or not that quantification, whether accurate or not, because of all of this you feel on some level that you maybe can’t even quite verbalize, out of shame or embarrassment, that the validity and volume of your complaints must be calibrated appropriately, must be in proportion to the aggregate suffering of your people.

Your oppression is second-class.”
― Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown

“What matters isn't what people say but what you like and find joy in. I hope you focus less on how you look to other people and more on fulfilling your true desires.”
― Baek Se-hee, I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki

“Xuan and I had decided to take a trip together in honor of our one-thousand-day anniversary. We ate Korean barbecue, shared a decadent cake, and then drove three and a half hours to Yosemite. I’d never heard of such an occasion. But in Seoul, where Ji-Hoon was born and raised, there was almost a monthly holiday devoted to romance. We wore similar out- fits, which Xuan said was common for couples in Asian countries. Three years was a big deal, especially when we didn’t know how many more we’d have.”
― Kayla Cunningham, Fated to Love You

“But she looked powerful. She wore the sun like a shiny pin on the side of her hair.”
― Lilian Li, House of Koi

“Fear increases when it's something that you keep to yourself. Instead of suffering alone, it can often be good to share it with someone else.”
― Baek Se-hee, I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki

“聪明一世，糊涂一时. Intelligent and cautious for a lifetime, it takes a second of stupidity to unravel it all.”
― Molly X. Chang, To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods

“You shouldn’t ask the girl blessed by Death whom she’ll die for. You should ask her whom she’ll kill for.”
― Molly X. Chang, To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods

“What was Kenzo's reaction to all this criticism? His approach was to stay completely silent. He made no move whatsoever to respond to any of it. And, of course, water eventually wins over fire. One by one, the opponents ran out of heat, their voices faded, their steps faltered and finally, with a wry smile and a shoulder shrug, they were forced to admit defeat.”
― Seishi Yokomizo, The Honjin Murders

“A man capable of love, or I should say rather a man who was by nature incapable of not loving; but a man who could not wholeheartedly accept the love of another--such a one was Sensei.”
― Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro

“As a matter of fact, country people tend to be worse than city people. You said just now that there was no one amongst your relatives that you would consider particularly bad. You seem to be under the impression that there is a special breed of bad humans. There is no such thing as a stereotype bad man in this world. Under normal conditions, everybody is more or less good, or, at least, ordinary. But tempt them, and they may suddenly change. That is what is so frightening about men. One must always be on one's guard.”
― Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro

“It was also revealed that the reason I am cruel to others is because I have low-self-esteem. Because I don’t love myself, I am unable to understand those who do love me in spite of it all, and so I test them. “You love me even when I do this? Or this? Or this?” Even when the other person forgives me, I am unable to understand their forgiveness, and when they give up on me, I torture and console myself with the “fact” that no one could ever love me. That goddamn self-esteem. [...] Looking more closely at myself, there are parts that I've improved on. I still remain someone who is unable to love herself. But as I had that thought, I had another: light and darkness are part of the same thing. Happiness and unhappiness alternate throughout life, as in a dance. So as long as I keep going and don’t give up, surely I will keep having moments of tears and laughter.

This book, therefore, ends not with answers but with a wish. I want to love and be loved. I want to find a way where I don’t hurt myself. I want to live a life where I say things are good more than things are bad. I want to keep failing and discovering new and better directions. I want to enjoy the tides of feeling in me as the rhythms of life. I want to be the kind of person who can walk inside the vast darkness and find the one fragment of sunlight I can linger in for a long time.
Some day, I will.”
― Baek Se-hee, I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki

“As summer and winter comes and goes
Impermanent are friends and foes
Arising from one sense of perception
Suffering from our limited comprehension
One must learn to humbly tolerate
And be free of attachment headache”
― A. D. Dauphinais, The Gold Lotus: Thousands of Cupid’s Arrows on the Battlefield of Love

“The line of the unmarried grew shorter every Chinese New Year.”
― Lilian Li, House of Koi

“After all, though our yesterdays may be different, we all share the same tomorrow.”
― Gene Luen Yang, Superman Smashes the Klan #1

“Asya' denince aklınıza ne geliyor? Çekik gözler? "Çan çin çon" sözü? Yoksulluk? Yoksa uyanan bir dev mi? Bu kitap, size Asya'da çok daha fazlasının olduğunu gösterecek.Avrupalılardan daha önce, Amerika'yı ilk keşfeden Türk kökenli Çinli amiral Zheng He ile 1421'de uzun bir deniz yolculuğuna çıkacak; oradan 2500 yıl önce Çinli bilge Sun Tzu tarafından yazılmış ilk strateji kitabının sayfalarında gezinecek, ama sonra bu bilgelik ve felsefe ülkesinin bugünkü toplumsal çöküşüne tanık olacağız. Don Kişot'tan önce bir Japonyalı kadın yazar tarafından yazılmış ilk romanı birlikte okuyacak, 'Japon mucizesi' üstüne düşüneceğiz. Japonya'da aşırı çalıştırılmaktan ölümleri, Hindistan'da kast düzenini, Kuzey Kore-Güney Kore sorununu, yorucu çözümlemelere girmeden, hepimizin okuyabileceği akıcılıkta gözden geçireceğiz. Siyam ikizlerinin öyküsünü öğrenip yine Siyam'dan bir köy romancısını tanıyacağız.Ve en sonunda, "Antarktika Tellioğullarınındır!" deyip Antarktika üstüne sürmekte olan paylaşım savaşını ele alacağız.
Ve her bir yazıdan sonra, dinlenmek, sanatın o hoşduyusuna kapılmak için Asya'dan çeşitli şiirler okuyacağız: "Ekmek parası mı kazanayım şiir mi yazayım?" diyecek Nepalli bir şair... İşgal dönemi Koresi'nden bir şair, "çalınmış tarlalara da gelir mi bahar?" diye soracak ülkesini düşünerek... "Benim ülkem cennet değildir" diyecek Filipinli bir şair, ülkesindeki yoksunluklara tanık olmamış turistlere... Ve Jose Rizal, bağımsız düşüncenin bu yiğit oğlu, son hoşçakalıyla veda edecek hepimize ve ardından bir şair "henüz değil Rizal henüz değil" diyecek...Yorucu olmayan ama uzun bir yolculuğa çıkaracak sizi bu kitap ve bittiğinde, kitabı okumadan önce Asya'ya ilişkin ne kadar az şey bildiğinizi şaşırarak farkedeceksiniz...”
― Ulaş Başar Gezgin, Asya Yazıları

“- Há mais de dez mil anos que os gatos e os seres humanos são
companheiros. E o que se percebe quando se vive com um gato há
muito tempo é que podemos pensar que somos donos deles, mas
não é assim que as coisas são. Eles simplesmente dão-nos o prazer
de desfrutarmos da sua companhia.”
― Genki Kawamura, If Cats Disappeared from the World

“Além disso, os seres humanos insistem em manter os gatos como animais de estimação, apesar da nossa angústia em relação à mortalidade, mesmo sabendo que os gatos morrerão muito antes de nós, causando aos donos uma dor incalculável.
(...)
Se olharmos bem para a questão, a morte de um gato não é muito diferente da morte de um ser humano.”
― Genki Kawamura, If Cats Disappeared from the World

“Há um limite para quão bem nos conhecemos a nós próprios. Não sabemos a impressão que causamos nos outros, não temos como conhecer o nosso próprio futuro e não podemos saber como será a nossa própria morte. E é por isso que precisamos dos gatos. É exatamente como disse a minha mãe: os gatos não precisam de nós; são os seres humanos que precisam dos gatos.”
― Genki Kawamura, If Cats Disappeared from the World

“Em vez de pensarmos na família como algo que existe, temos de pensar nela como algo que se constrói. Nós «fazemos» a família.”
― Genki Kawamura, If Cats Disappeared from the World

“Há uma razão para que as coisas existam neste mundo. E não há nenhuma razão suficientemente boa para as eliminar.”
― Genki Kawamura, If Cats Disappeared from the World

“No lonelier feeling in the world than having people stare at you all the time, but nobody truly seeing you.”
― Katie Zhao, How We Fall Apart

“Mozasu era convinto che la vita fosse più simile al pachinko, nel quale anche il caso aveva un ruolo importante.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“She said that was the only way for us to live, to be like poets.”
― Durian Sukegawa, Sweet Bean Paste

“Our unspeakable losses can be captured through the silence built into the lyric fragment.”
― Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

“To love was a privilege not afforded to those of us born in these trying times when survival was never guaranteed.
We were products of our surroundings, of our upbringings.”
― Molly X. Chang, To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods

“白发送黑发, 不孝之道. Letting the white hair bury the black hair was unfilial to the highest degree.”
― Molly X. Chang, To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods

“Hitler is associated with the word evil because he wanted to create a new colony or space in Europe, rather than Africa and Asia.”
― Mwanandeke Kindembo