Chen Chen Quotes

Getting lost is just another way of saying 'going exploring.

Beauty—real everlasting beauty—lives not on our faces, but in our attitude and our actions. It lives in what we do for ourselves and for others.

Adventure in life is good; consistency in coffee even better.

He knew me in all the ways that truly mattered: the shape of my fears, the contours of my dreams.

To dream is to starve doubt, feed hope.

Flawed, we're truly interesting, truly memorable, and yes, truly beautiful.

Come on, don't you ever stop and smell the coffee?

You raze the old to raise the new.

I hated roses. I hated them for being so trite, so clichéd, a default, all-purpose flower that said I love you, I'm sorry, and get well soon. Give me peonies and tulips, orchids or gardenia. Those were flowers with character.

When the creative impulse sweeps over you, grab it. You grab it and honor it and use it, because momentum is a rare gift.

There must be a few times in life when you stand at a precipice of a decision. When you know there will forever be a Before and an After...I knew there would be no turning back if I designated this moment as my own Prime Meridian from which everything else would be measured.

Inertia is so easy—don't fix what's not broken. Leave well enough alone. So we end up accepting what is broken, mistaking complaining for action, procrastinating for deliberation.

I didn't know that the world could be so mind-blowingly beautiful.

Lan XiChen, 'You believe in him?' Lan WangJi, 'I do.' He answered without any hesitation. Wei WuXian felt his chest warm up.

Maybe getting around in life was nothing but map-reading. A skill that required practice. A key to unlock where you wanted to go. A legend to show where you were.

Physical beauty wasn't the same as True Beauty, any more than pretty ugly meant truly ugly or Magnetic North meant True North.

That's when it struck me: how gorgeous we all were, even with cellulite (saw a lot of that) and stretch marks, scars and tattoos. Let me just say this, not single body was perfect, not even the fittest of women there.

That's exactly why nature always trumps gardens. Gardens are just reality pruned of chaos. What doesn't work you rip out.

What would it be like to look in the mirror and actually accept what you see? Not loathe the reflection, or despise it, or be resigned to it? But to like it?

If Jacob was right and clothes were costumes and makeup a mask, then our attitudes and habits must be our shields.

Silence, too, can be torture.

You know, there are easier ways to meet a guy than to run him over.

Ngày ngày kẹt giữa đám đông, chen chúc trên những con đường đông nghịt người, nhiều khi tôi giật mình, trời ơi, họ kia, đồng loại mình kia, sao mình lại thấy cô đơn đến rã rời… Lúc ấy, tôi có một cảm giác kì lạ, chỉ mình trên đời nầy, chỉ một mình… Chẳng ai là tri âm, chẳng ai cả…

Safe, I decided, didn't leave much room for fun.

There is real comfort in being quiet.

Wait!" What?" I lowered my cup hastily, wondering if maybe there was a stray hair, or worse, a newly boiled bug inside my cup. You got to smell it first. It's the proper way to cup coffee." Cup coffee?" Taste it." What? Are you the coffee police or something?

Let the glossy spreads have their heart-stopping, head-turning kind of beauty. Give me the heart-filling beauty instead. Jolie laide, that's what I would choose. Flawed, we're truly interesting, truly memorable, and yes, truly beautiful.

Teachers wondered why I didn't speak up more in class. Why would I when I knew how precarious words could be, how betraying they were, how vulnerable they made you?

I wondered about her chicken-and-egg relationship with Dad. Which came first? Her helplessness or his controlling?

The ace world is not an obligation. Nobody needs to identify, nobody is trapped, nobody needs to stay forever and pledge allegiance. The words are gifts. If you know which terms to search, you know how to find others who might have something to teach.

Distance simply means separation in place but never in connections. Heart remains inseparable.

Lily lit up. “Do I want to come on a bro road trip with you, rushing to the aid of gorgeous damsel in distress, Jem I’d-love-to-climb-’em Carstairs?

Nothing lasts,'" said Nezha, at the same time that Kitay said, "'The world doesn't exist.

This is beautiful," I said, ignoring the shop window to trace the gleaming stone walls fronting another boutique. "You know what's funny?" Jacob asked. He didn't wait for my answer. "You can see beauty in everything, except for yourself." *** I swallowed hard. Erik thought my body was beautiful, Karin that it was enviable. At random times, people had noted that my hands were beautiful, or my hair. The Twisted Sisters had called my art beautiful. Mom had the best intentions and always told me before and after my laser surgeries that I would be beautiful. But no one had ever said that I was beautiful, all my parts taken together, not just the bits and pieces.

If I must be a villain, I will be one of my own making.

Do not ask for less responsibility to be free and relaxed--Ask for more strenght!

You once said that you were tired of the horror in the world," I say. "Well, so am I. We can still find a way to fight it, the right way. We can find a way to do this together.

[True beauty] seeps into you. It doesn't make you forget yourself, but totally the opposite. It connects you with everything and fills you with awe that you share the same space with something that glorious. Like a sunrise or a clear blue day or the most extraordinary piece of glass. And then suddenly...you have this epiphany that there's more to the world than just you and what you want or even who you are.

Aren’t all great love stories, at their core, great mistakes?

Jolie laide = "pretty ugly" Draws you to it...bored into heart and mind.

once you go Zachariah, you never go backariah

Normal is often treated as a moral judgment, when it is often simply a statistical matter. The question of what everyone else is doing is less important than the question of what works for the two people in the actual relationship. It matters that everyone’s needs are carefully considered and respected, not that everyone is doing the same thing.

Sometimes I want to kiss him and sometimes I want to ruin him, but most of the time, I want those actions to be one and the same.

What swells inside me is a love so boundless, I am the sunrise and sunset. I am Liberty Bell in the Cascades. I am Beihai Lake. I am every beautiful, truly beautiful, thing I've ever seen, captured in my personal Geographia, the atlas of myself.

If art made you think, then this was Art. Staring at the ball, made of layers and layers of cloth, I wondered about the glass marble at its heart. What if you wanted to reach that marble? Make sure it was still whole? You'd have to remove the layers. You'd have to risk breaking the ball for a chance at freeing it. Fear, knowledge, certainty - you'd have to be willing to let them all go.

Without looking at Jacob, I said slowly, 'Well, it seeps into you. It doesn't make you forget yourself, but totally the opposite.' I chance a glance at him. He was watching me intently. No glaze in his eyes. So I continued more bravely: 'It connect you with everything and fills you with awe that you share the same space with something that glorious. Like a sunrise on a clear blue day of the most extraordinary piece of glass. And then suddenly'--my hands escaped their tight grip in my lap, and now my fingers splayed wide like fireworks in the air--'you have this epiphany that there's more to the world than just you and what you want or even who you are.

What was so miraculous about a relationship that was based more on my gratitude than on mutual self respect?

My curse, my ruin, my Violet - my heart is yours. It was always yours. Take it.

On Earth lately, I’ve been looking at everyone like I love them, & maybe I do. Or maybe I only love one person, & I’m beaming from it. Or actually I just love myself, & I want people to know.

Difference can be a gift. Being ace can mean less interpersonal drama and more freedom from social norms around relationships. It is an opportunity to focus more on other passions, to be less distracted by sexuality, to break the scripts, to choose your own adventure and your own values.

Maybe we don't have the same definition of about what's beautiful. So define it. Define true beauty.

The pressure of his touch through my jacket and my sweater was more assurance than any promise ever made to me. It was a touch that said, I have your back and I am here for you. If a girl wasn't careful, she could fall in love with a touch like that.

Aces aren't a puzzle with a missing piece. Everyone is their own full puzzle.

You don't need a geochache for this one." "You don't, huh?" "Nope.. here I am. Here I am.

My confidence was of the hothouse variety, carefully cultivated under highly regulated conditions. One wrong look, one mean comment, and my facade would wither.

You would be surprised what two hours of daily exercise and five hundred stomach crunches can do for you.

Brother Zacharide-him-like-a-bad-pony.

Brother Sixpackariah.

Maybe we can find a way to move forward, on the same page. We can find a way to be together. I lean forward into this looking-glass version of our very first meeting. My steady gaze meets his. "So, I have a job offer for you," I say to him. "Would you like to hear more?

It seems that the message is ‘we have liberated our sexuality, therefore we must now celebrate it and have as much sex as we want,’” says Jo, an ace policy worker in Australia. “Except ‘as much sex as we want’ is always lots of sex and not no sex, because then we are oppressed, or possibly repressed, and we’re either not being our true authentic selves, or we haven’t discovered this crucial side of ourselves that is our sexuality in relation to other people, or we haven’t grown up properly or awakened yet.

But even quashed rebellions leave us different. Because freedom may be a forbidden fruit in tyrannies, but once tasted, it is unforgettable.

Like world describers before me, those mapmakers in the seventeenth centure, I had laid down my first faintly drawn border. With that one tentative mark, my world expanded by a few freeing degrees.

Sometimes, parents & children become the most common strangers. Eventually, a street appears where they can meet again.

You know, sometimes the most direct route isn't the right one. - Jacob

Compulsory sexuality is a set of assumptions and behaviors that support the idea that every normal person is sexual, that not wanting (socially approved) sex is unnatural and wrong, and that people who don’t care about sexuality are missing out on an utterly necessary experience.

No power was total, no power permanent, no power absolute.

Oh no, Brother Hop-in-the-sack-ariah

Lan XiChen was shocked, "Young Master Wei, could it be that even after you spent such a long time together with WangJi, you still do not know of his feelings?

Loving another person should never mean forfeiting bodily autonomy.

I lean forward into this looking-glass version of our very first meeting. My steady gaze meets his. "So, I have a job offer for you," I say to him. "Would you like to hear more?

As they passed through the crowd, people blinked at them until finally Lily Chen, looking annoyed, stood up and said, in a loud, bored voice, "I cannot believe my own eyes. Isn't that Jace Herondale and Clary Fairchild, back from THE DEAD?

This was Skywalker and Kenobi as they should be: a team built on emotion and intellect, bravado and control, fire and ice. And despite no longer having the formal bond of Master and apprentice, they would always be connected. In fact, they were better this way.

Hey, if it's a good philosophy, it works. Death is imminent. Live every day like it's your last.

The label of asexual should be value neutral. It should indicate little more than sexual orientation. Instead, asexual implies a slew of other, negative associations: passionless, uptight, boring, robotic, cold, prude, frigid, lacking, broken. These, especially broken, are the words aces use again and again to describe how we are perceived and made to feel.

Straight people are rarely treated like they’re close-minded for knowing their sexual orientation, but aces are assumed to be unsure and always on the brink of finding the person who will change everything.

In the matter of prejudice...we are all the same. Goddess and demon, human and monster: none of us understand difference, but at least some of us make the effort to try.

Ever the collector of treasure maps that promised the world but led nowhere.

If there was one thing I refused to be, it was an insignificant footnote in some boy's history.

‎Không phải vô tình mà chiếc đồng hồ mang hình tròn. Mỗi ngày trôi qua, cứ tưởng là đang tiến về phía trước nhưng trên thực tế, đã quay lại vị trí ban đầu. Cuộc sống tù đọng. Chỉ trẻ con mới nghĩ là lớn lên sẽ tự do đến nơi mình muốn, làm điều mình thích. Chín mươi chín phần trăm chúng ta lần lượt lập gia đình, sinh con, đi làm, khai thuế, nhích dần từng bậc lương, đánh vật với các phương tiện giao thông, uống cà phê như uống nước để chống chọi các cơn buồn ngủ. Mọi dự định đều để giành đến hai ngày cuối tuần nhưng thứ bảy buổi sáng chen lấn trong siêu thị, buổi chiều hút bụi lau cửa kính giặt quần áo rửa xe ô tô, chủ nhật ăn cơm trưa xong đã bốn giờ chiều, hai ly rượu vang lại khiến phải ra đi-văng làm một giấc, tám giờ tối thức dậy ăn nốt chỗ cơm thừa ban trưa, thế là vừa vặn đúng bốn mươi tám tiếng đã tưởng chệch ra được vòng tròn của thời gian.

I didn't have the language to communicate that to this little girl -- or to communicate that beauty -- real everlasting beauty -- lives not on our faces, but in our attitude and our actions. It lives in what we do for ourselves and for others.

From her dubious tone alone, I could see how Karin had no idea how terrifying words spoken quietly could be. How words chosen precisely to wreak maximum damage ticked like a bomb in your head, but exploded in your heart hours later, leaving you scarred and changed.

And then there was Jacob, who stepped closer to me and then waited, letting me decide whether I would take the next step. Balanced there in indecision, it was as if the Twisted Sisters were before me, shaking their pom-poms, asking: But what is fair about staying with a guy who is ashamed to be seen with you? What was so miraculous about a relationship that was based more on my gratitude than mutual respect.

To kill deliberately is very wrong,” said Chen Gong. “I would rather betray the world than let the world betray me,” was Cao Cao’s reply. Chen Gong could say nothing.

A plate of roast duck, steamed dumplings, spicy noodles with beef gravy, pickled cucumbers, stewed tongue and eggs if you have them, cold please, and sticky rice pearls, too,' Ai Ling said, before the server girl could open her mouth. "I don't know what he wants." Ai Ling nodded toward Chen Yong. 'I'm not sure I have enough coins to order anything more,' he said, laughing.

I believe in wolves—in con men and crowned men who wear wickedness as if it were a talent. Who don’t ask for judgment before devouring what’s theirs. They know the future is no better than a roll of rigged dice, so they may as well do the rigging.

Within relationships, the desire to have sex and the desire not to have sex are so often treated unequally because of the common belief that entering a relationship requires giving up a measure of consent.

It is a failure of society if anyone needs to say “I have a partner” to turn someone down, and it is a failure of society if anyone needs to invoke a sexual orientation to avoid unwanted sex because saying no doesn’t do the job.

But the truly brilliant geocachers?" "Yeah?" he says. "What about us?" "They know it by its real name. Terra Firma." "Terra Firma," he repeats. At last, he slips his backpack off his shoulder. I know what he's looking for. I take a breath. "You don't need your GPS for this cache." His eyes don't move off mine; he's watching me so carefully. "You don't, huh?" "Nope," I say. Some things are meant to be kept - what you learn from experiences good or bad, smiles from an orphaned girl, a boy who is your compass pointing to your True North. So I look at Jacob full in the face with nothing obscuring him. Or me. And then I step closer to him. And closer. And closer yet. "Here I am," I tell him. "Here I am.

The truth of the gender inequality in sexual freedom, and the importance of teaching women to honor their sexual desires, has distorted into the belief that female sexual liberation only looks like one thing—and that’s the opposite of what women’s lives looked like before. Overcorrection doesn’t solve the problem. It only redistributes the shame and the stigma.

There is a time to study a map passionately, obsessively. To see where you've gone, where others have gone before you. To commit to memory every obstacle, every danger. Shakespeare had a term for this obsession: mappery. But there is a time, too, when you say, come dragons. I challenge you to find me.

Lan WangJi’s brows sunk low as he shook his head. A few moments later, he replied in a low voice, “Brother, I want to take someone back to the Cloud Recesses.” Lan XiChen was surprised, “Take someone back to the Cloud Recesses?” Lan WangJi nodded, his expression pensive. After a pause, he continued, “Take him back… and hide him somewhere.

Harmful, consensual sex happens and people should be allowed to speak freely using those terms. Those who have been harmed by sex deserve support regardless of whether they consented. Everyone should acknowledge the other side too, that we can hurt someone even if we did not mean to and even if we checked in and tried to do due diligence.

I want to get good grades. Graduate. Get a job in whichever field my strengths lie." His brows furrow, like he doesn't quite believe me. "Not what you're passionate about?" he asks delicately. I lift my chin. "I'm passionate about being good at things." There's a defensive edge in my voice, and Mr. Chen must hear it. He drops the subject. "Well, all right then. I suppose I should let you go to lunch..." "Thanks, Mr. Chen." But as I turn to leave, he adds, very quietly, "You're still a kid, you know." I falter. "what?" His eyes are kind, almost sad when he looks at me. "Even if it doesn't feel that way now, you're still only a kid." He shakes his head. "you're too young to be this hardened by the world. You should be free to dream. To hope.

An undirected sex drive isn’t a quirk of ace experience; it’s another way of saying “being horny,” which can afflict anyone because horniness does not need to include sexual attraction. Imagine a gay man with a high sex drive surrounded by women. It is possible for him to feel horny and want to get laid even if he’s not interested in anyone around him. Sexual attraction, then, is horniness toward or caused by a specific person. It is the desire to be sexual with that partner—libido with a target. To use a food metaphor: a person can feel physiological hunger, which would be like sex drive, without craving a specific dish, which would be more like sexual attraction.

The look he gave me...My stomach quivered in that exact same way when I watched Before Sunset, yearning for a guy to know me so deeply and truly, we were only really complete when we were together. That I could talk, go on wild tangents, make obtuse references, and he would divine my meaning before I knew what I was trying to say myself. Erik had fallen asleep next to me on the couch, complaining later that the movie was "just people talking." He had no idea that this movie could have been a love letter written for me.

About Bane. Don’t hurt him,” Raphael said abruptly. Alec hesitated. “No,” he said, his voice softer. “I would never—” Raphael held up a peremptory hand. “Stop being disgusting, please,” he said. “I don’t care if you wound his, as the kids say, ‘wittle fee-fees.’ Dump him like a ton of magic bricks. I wish you would. I just meant, don’t kill him.” “I’m not going to kill him,” Alec said, appalled. His blood ran cold at the idea, and colder as he looked down into Raphael’s face. The vampire was serious. “Aren’t you?” Raphael asked. “Shadowhunter.” He said the word the same way as the Downworlders of the Shadow Market had, but it sounded different in service of protecting someone Alec would gladly give his life to shield from harm. It made Alec wonder if the people of the Market were all looking at him and seeing a threat to someone they cared for. “Stop it, Raphael,” said Lily. She gave Alec a brief, surprisingly sympathetic look. “Kid’s obviously in love.” “Ugh,” said Raphael. “Terrible business. Let’s get out of here.” Elliott cheered. “Can we go to the after-party?” “No,” Raphael said with distaste. He left Alec and walked away without a look back. After a quick last glance, Lily and then Elliott turned to follow.

Anna held up a small black-bound memorandum book. Cordelia hadn’t even seen her retrieve it. They strode out of the bedroom, Anna waving the book over her head in triumph. “This,” she announced, “will hold the answers to all our questions.” Matthew looked up, his eyes fever-bright. “Is this your list of conquests?” “Of course not,” Anna declared. “It’s a memorandum book… about my conquests. That is an important but meaningful distinction.” Anna flipped through the book. There were many pages, and many names written in a bold, sprawling hand. “Hmm, let me see. Katherine, Alicia, Virginia—a very promising writer, you should look out for her work, James—Mariane, Virna, Eugenia—” “Not my sister Eugenia?” Thomas nearly upended his cake. “Oh, probably not,” Anna said. “Laura, Lily… ah, Hypatia. Well, it was a brief encounter, and I suppose you might say she seduced me.…” “Well, that hardly seems fair,” said James. “Like someone solving a case before Sherlock Holmes. If I were you I would feel challenged, as if to a duel.” Matthew chuckled. Anna gave James a dark look. “I know what you’re trying to do,” she said. “Is it working?” said James. “Possibly,” said Anna, regarding the book. Cordelia couldn’t help but wonder: Was Ariadne’s name in there? Was she considered a conquest now, or something—someone—else?

Instead of letting labels like romantic and platonic (or friend versus partner) guide actions and expectations, it is possible for the desires themselves to guide actions and expectations. More effective than relying on labels to provide instruction is skipping directly to asking for what we want—around time, touch, commitment, and so on as David Jay wrote—regardless of whether those desires confuse hardline ideas of what these two categories are supposed to look like. When the desires don’t fit the labels, it is often the labels that should be adjusted or discarded, not the desires. If everyone is behaving ethically, it doesn’t matter if a relationship doesn’t fit into a preconceived social role, if it feels neither platonic nor romantic or if it feels like both at the same time.

The last werewolf tripped over Raphael Santiago’s foot. Alec hastily hit him in the back of the head with the hilt of his seraph blade, and the werewolf stayed down. “That was an accident,” said Raphael, with Lily and Elliott sticking close behind him. “He got in my way as I was trying to leave.” “Okay,” Alec panted. He wiped dust and sweat out of his eyes. Bat the DJ staggered toward them, claws out, and Alec flipped his seraph blade so he was holding the hilt again. “Someone dropped a piece of roof on me,” Bat told him, blinking in a way that was more owlish than wolfish. “Inconsiderate.” Alec realized Bat was not so much on a murderous out-of-control rampage as mildly concussed. “Easy there,” he said, as Bat tumbled against his chest. He looked around for the most trustworthy person, for someone to be on his team. He took a gamble and dumped Bat into Lily’s arms. “Watch him for me, will you?” he asked. “Make sure he gets out all right.” “Put that werewolf down immediately, Lily,” Raphael ordered. “It really hurts that you would say that,” Bat muttered, and shut his eyes. Lily considered Bat’s head, pillowed on her lavender bosom. “I don’t want to put him down,” she announced. “The Shadowhunter gave this DJ to me.” Bat opened one eye. “Do you like music?” “I do,” said Lily. “I like jazz.” “Cool,” said Bat. Raphael threw up his hands. “This is ridiculous! Fine,” he snapped. “Fine. Let’s just vacate the collapsing mansion, shall we? Can we all agree on that one fun, non-suicidal activity?

A pretty vampire woman in a cheongsam came flying down the hallway, ribbons waving from her purple-streaked hair like a silken flag. Her face was familiar. Alec had seen her at Taki’s, and around the city more generally, usually with Raphael. “Save us, oh fearless leader,” said Raphael’s lady friend. “Elliott’s in a huge aquarium puking blue and green. He tried to drink mermaid blood. He tried to drink selkie blood. He tried to—” “Ahem,” said Raphael, with a savage jerk of his head in Alec’s direction. Alec waved. “Shadowhunter,” he said. “Right here. Hi.” “He tried to keep to the Accords and obey all the known Laws!” the woman declared. “Because that’s the New York clan’s idea of a truly festive good time.” Alec remembered Magnus and tried not to look like he was here to ruin the Downworlder party. There was one thing he and this woman had in common. He recognized the bright purple she was wearing. “I think I saw you earlier,” said Alec hesitantly. “You were—making out with a faerie girl?” “Yeah, you’re gonna have to be more specific than that,” said the vampire woman. “This is a party. I’ve made out with six faerie girls, four faerie boys, and a talking toadstool whose gender I’m unsure about. Pretty sexy for a toadstool, though.” Raphael covered his face briefly with his non-texting hand. “Why, you want to make something of it?” The woman bristled. “How happy I am to see the Nephilim constantly crashing our parties. Were you even invited?” “I’m a plus-one,” said Alec. The vampire girl relaxed slightly. “Oh, right, you’re Magnus’s latest disaster,” she said. “That’s what Raphael calls you. I’m Lily.” She lifted a hand in a halfhearted wave. Alec glanced at Raphael, who arched his eyebrow at Alec in an unfriendly way. “Didn’t realize Raphael and I were on pet name terms,” said Alec. He continued to study Raphael. “Do you know Magnus well?” “Hardly at all,” said Raphael. “Barely acquainted. I don’t think much of his personality. Or his dress sense. Or the company he keeps. Come away, Lily. Alexander, I hope I never see you again.” “I’ve decided I detest you,” Lily told Alec. “It’s mutual,” Alec said dryly. Unexpectedly, that made Lily smile, before Raphael dragged her away.