Nghi Vo Quotes

Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves.

You will never remember the great if you do not remember the small.

When you love a thing too much, it is a special kind of pain to show it to others and to see that it is lacking.

The abbey at Singing Hills would say that if a record cannot be perfect, it should at least be present. Better for it to exist than for it to be perfect and only in your mind.

She had a foreigner’s beauty, like a language we do not know how to read.

Submission but only to the truth.

Look to your records, cleric. Honor is a light that brings trouble. Shadows are safer by far.

I am yours, and so I will be your light and your laughter. I am yours, so open your eyes to look at me, and open your mouth so that I may kiss it. I am yours, I am yours, and nevermore will I leave.

Strange how some trash survives, but precious things are lost, isn’t it?

Being close to her was like being warmed by a bonfire, and I had been cold for a long time.

She killed, for she was angry, and she did not eat what she killed, for she was heartsick.

There are women who will forgive a great deal for a moment of kindness from a handsome man, but Daisy and the other older girls who had taken me under their wings had taught me not to be one of them.

Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves. I am not worried for her in the least.

Those who bear children hold the keys to life and death, and their ill wishes are to be feared.

He wanted something agreeable, something sweeter around the edges, but I was never very good at sweet.

It was after midnight with that tired charm that all parties on the downturn acquire.

Yes,” I sighed. Sometimes, the only excuse for doing something stupid is knowing that you are doing it and being willing to accept the consequences.

The night before her wedding, Daisy taught me that after the world ended, you still had to get up in the morning, and the things that you ruined would still be there, needing to be fixed. When I looked at famous Jay Gatsby, soul gone and some terrible engine he called love driving him now, I could see that for him, the world was always ending. For him, it was all a wreck and a ruin, and he had no idea why the rest of us weren't screaming.

She was known to be kind, which you should never confuse with being gracious or beautiful or courteous.

Let him kill himself,” I said finally. “As long as he is dead, that is all that matters to me.” That’s something I think peasants understand better than nobles. For them, the way down matters, whether you are skewered by a dozen guardsmen or thrown in a silk sack to drown or allowed to remove your robe and walk down to the shores of the lake before you gut yourself. Peasants understand that dead is dead.

And so you came to my house on the soft pads of a midwinter kitten, the whisper of your black tresses sweeping your heels, and so you came to my heart just as quietly. Why, then, did you make such a terrible noise when you let go of my hand and departed, a great trumpeting of horns, a great beating of drums?

He called me careless because he didn't have the words to sort out how jealous he was of my money and my freedom and how very few people in the world could act as I did.

Men had no idea how careless the women of their set weren't allowed to be.

I will share every meal that I ever have with you. I will let you eat first from every dish and drink first from every cup.

When I looked at famous Jay Gatsby, soul gone and some terrible engine he called love driving him now, I could see that for him, the world was always ending. For him, it was all a wreck and a ruin, and he had no idea why the rest of us weren’t screaming.

Oh yes. Some people are just more . . . edible than others if you are a tiger.

We don’t have to do anything. We can just wait for fall. Life starts over again in fall.

Ugly women, beautiful women, what foolishness. Most of us are lucky if we're born with a measure of common sense in our heads.

Always will my soul reach for yours.

You must have been happy." She puffed a soft breath between her lips, shrugged. "I was free. That's better than happy. Happy came later. Are you?" "I will be," I said firmly. "Both.

The wind came into the house from the Sound, and it blew Daisy and me around her East Egg mansion like puffs of dandelion seeds, like foam, like a pair of young women in white dresses who had no cares to weigh them down.

Your departure crashes like a thunder, and the timbers of the house shake with the force of the space you left behind.

The world is built on who carries what and for who.

There was a heat to her that put the day to shame, as if she were burning up with fever from within.

History will say that she was an ugly woman, but that is not true. She had a foreigner’s beauty, like a language we do not know how to read.

She disappeared like Kazu did, like any number of women did over the years, unremarked, and their demise as unremarkable as surely they were not.

When you can't fix a thing, the best course of action can be to ruin it all so that no one can see what truly happened." Nick laughed, and I wondered if that was what love was, making someone forget the pain that gnawed at them and would not stop.

They lived well-fed until they were only bones, and then their bones were happy, turning white and sharp as teeth in the moonlight.

When you’re alone so much, realizing that you’re not is terribly upsetting.

We were stories that should never have met, or stories that only existed because we met. I still don't know.

I sit in the moon-viewing pavilion, the hem of my sleeves wet from tears, and I cannot see for the grief has stolen my eyes, and I cannot speak for the grief has stolen my tongue.

In-yo would say that the war was won by silenced and nameless women, and it would be hard to argue with her.

I know very well, though, that In-yo never hated Kao-fan. She may have pitied her, or been angry with her, or simply found her irritating or foolish or unfashionable. Hate, however, was reserved for equals, and as far as In-yo was concerned, she had no equals in all the empire.

He liked being shocked by the extravagances of the city, but he was not ready for the people that came with the wonder, who lived shoulder to shoulder with wonder and thus grew immune to it.

What's so great about being seen?" Tara demanded. "What's so important about that?" She might have had the words for it, but I didn't. They locked up in my throat, about being invisible, about being alien and foreign and strange even in the place where I was born, and about the immortality that wove through my parents' lives but ultimately would fail them. Their immortality belonged to other people, and I hated that.

Aunt Justine once gave me some advice when I was newly come to New York. If I was going to be passing anything more than time in public with a man, I should always find out what happened when he heard no, whether it was from me, a taxi driver, a waiter, or his employer. “You may decide what to do after that,” she said, “but most times, your course of action will be clear.

My eyes are open for always, my mouth is empty for always, and always will my soul reach for yours. In the land of the dead, there are only blackbirds, and I send this one to you, in the hopes that you remember me still. Light me a stick of incense, and so long as it burns, let me sit in the chamber outside your bedroom again. Until it goes out...Let me stay and be for you.

What’s your name?” I asked her after making a study of her face for a half dozen years. There was a cragginess to her features, her strong nose and her sharp jaw. It would crash ships rather than launch them, but I never knew a woman who didn’t want to crash at least a few ships.

And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.

I already knew that being brave didn’t mean anything unless you were willing to do it again.

Honor is a light that brings trouble. Shadows are safer by far.

Hate, however, was reserved for equals

They were Dieu’s favorite lines, and she was almost afraid to look up to see how the tiger took them. When you love a thing too much, it is a special kind of pain to show it to others and to see that it is lacking.

I had never seen a moon like that before. It was no Mercury dime New York moon, but a harvest moon brought all the way from the wheat fields of North Dakota to shine with sweet benevolence down on the chosen and the beautiful.

she needed to talk like other people needed to eat or to breathe. At some point, she realized that it didn’t matter at all what she said, and so she turned into a bubble of fashionable bon mots, non sequiturs, and giddy dizzy excitement.

As the sun grew ripe and started to stop towards the horizon, Scholar Dieu read the poem, and as she did, it came to Ho Thi Thao how very beautiful she was. She has been beautiful in bed for three days, which was important, and she was beautiful now, when she was angry at having her way blocked. It came to Ho Thi Thao that perhaps she wanted to learn how else the scholar was beautiful, and even in what ways the scholar might be ugly, which could also be fascinating and beloved.

When I explained it to her, she went silent and turned her face to the wall, still as the sky before a lightning strike.

Save that anger,” Mai said with a sigh. “Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves.

it was like being set adrift in a sea where I couldn’t drown, where all the monsters lurking in the depths rather liked me and wouldn’t upset my little craft.

Summer in New York goes by slowly until it goes by fast,

The sky went a flat aluminum gray with sullen purple highlights, a warning of danger.

Some of those girls had babies inside them, and others had broken hearts or broken heads, but they fed the Mississippi all the same, and I had no interest in being one of them.

I'm curious, though, and my father said that if I could be curious instead of afraid, things would probably work out some kind of right.

Under the wrack and wreck of what had come before, the sky was new, and I reached for it with a yearning eager hand.

I would never be adorable and bubbling over with praise for myself and others. Instead, I was still and cold, and had to hope that was enough.

I wasn't good with other girls. I felt strange around them, all competition tangled with a desperate urge to please and belong.

a young woman with only outrage on her side

No one likes a prodigy, after all.

Chih thought that even from the crowd, they would see in her face the trace of a migratory bird, a rabbit, and the empress from the north, fierce enough to fight wolves.

You are so slow the Huan River could run backwards and the emperor could give the realm to the rule of the people and they could breed a wise horse and an honest lawyer before you landed a blow.

I spared him the trouble of coming up with a reason to talk to me, instead plucking the drink from his hand. It was a bijou, vermouth and gin flavored with absinthe; a strange choice for Nick if it was a choice he had made at all.

Down among the ashes, their faces and hands turned gray and grimy with the refuse of New York, I could see the men who lived and worked in the ash. It was their lot to shovel the ash that came in. It was a titanic struggle that I imagined they could only cope with by realizing that they were after an impossible goal and therefore were free to ignore it.

Death doesn’t come to Gatsby’s” went the rumor, and it might even have been true. Certainly ugliness didn’t, and neither did morning or hangovers or hungers that could not be sated. Those things waited for us outside the gates, so whoever wanted to go home?

Oberlin Wolfe and the riders were still somewhere in the fires, fighting and fucking and dancing to forget whatever price Oberlin paid to keep all this going. November second would come, though, and there would be no tithe or audience to hold back Oberlin’s hand.

Nemo's daughter held a light in her, pure and silvery, and it was not fueled on hate. It burned steadily in her heart, so strong that surely it would never go out, never be extinguished, and the siren could feel herself reach for that. "Beautiful but not pure," my mind whispered while I begged. Nothing we had done in the shadows of the Friday fires was pure. It was better than that. It was true. It was everything I was and everything I could be—was meant to be—if only I dared. It twisted inside me, hungry and vicious and clever.

She smiled sweetly, and took my hand in hers. She smelled faintly of milk and honey and something warmer as well. Later, I realized that she was still very much on painkillers when we were having this conversation. “Of course it is, min skatt. Nothing’s hard but life, eh?

Did you keep it?” I asked. I wouldn’t have been so sanguine about taking gifts from someone like Gatsby, but she gave me an indignant look. Things were different where she came from, apparently, or perhaps she wasn’t so very bright. “Two hundred and sixty-five dollars, gas blue with lavender beads? Of course I did!

When I looked at Michel de Winter, old god that he was, I could see the worship in his eyes, a kind of helpless love that didn't even want to help itself. To see her was to love her, and a wanting rose up in me like an ache. I wanted someone to look at me like that; I wanted to change the world simply because I could.

I imagined their lungs were protected in their youth by keeping their mouths shut tight. Then as they grew older themselves, more prone to voice their opinions, more eager to make sure that the world did not go one second longer without their words than it absolutely had to, the ash won over, sliding over their skin and then into their open mouths.

What a cock the Shaking Earth Master must be if he’s going to sit on his ass in his fortress, refusing to move until he sees a lovely face and a trim pair of legs.

You can only praise a mammoth when you are alone with her and no one else can hear.

You left too soon, and that is unfair, but we are not the ones who sped you on your way. Forgive us what we did, and do not follow us when we go.

Like they have anything in common besides having two legs,

the Sound rose up in delicate white foam blooms, the water choppier than it had been.

Someone had tied her big toes together with string, a tradition in the East to keep a corpse from walking.

but it is different, isn’t it, when it’s your body, your future, your reputation, and your mistake.

The world is built on who carries what and for who,” Chih said, settling the weight more comfortably on their shoulders. “It’s not a bad world where we carry presents for people who feed us.

For him, as in the hallowed halls of the elite from New York to Chicago to San Francisco, there would always be a human price for his luxury. Otherwise, I could see him musing, what was the point?

See, this combination means that you will be successful in your career, but only if you remember to take things in their own time. No one likes a prodigy, after all. Patience should be your watchword.

It was common tat around New York that an old wizard had made her from a whole garden’s worth of peonies. He should have made her out of something more sturdy, because she was looking wilted under the August heat.

... He was unimportant, the least of In-yo's spies and couriers, but—" Almost Brilliant fluttered her wings in the dying light. "I understand. I will remember Sukai for you, and so will my children and their children as well.

She was clever and determined. I could see it in her tigers, in the life she had built so far away from everything either of us had ever known. I needed a silver screen to give me a dream, but she had painted her own out of nothing at all.

I wanted what Clarissa Montgomery had, the ability to take those looks, to bend them and to make them hers, to make the moment hers, to make the whole world hers if she wanted. I wanted that, and that want was the core of everything that came after.

The barber paused, flicking water droplets from his razor with a brisk snap of his wrist. “Well, I once shaved Governor Liu of Qin Province during the processional, and last summer, I stepped in to thread Crimson Bow’s brows when her own barber was ill.

Back in Louisville, that high wet smell coupled with the uncomfortable prickling heat meant that a twister was on the way, crossing the flat cropland with a destructive fury that was out to ruin lives. We were in the East, however, and we had other ways to ruin our lives.

I wasn't really interested in making a go of it with anyone, no matter what Tom and Daisy were pushing, but part of that disinterest came from the place of a rather arrogant person realizing that she couldn't. There was nothing as uninteresting as something I couldn't have.

We followed his arm to where Anna Farnsworth languished beneath the ghostly lights, the illumination giving her a flickering phosphor tint. She had just appeared in The Girl on the Strand, utterly scandalous. It was common tat around New York that an old wizard had made her from a whole garden’s worth of peonies. He should have made her out of something more sturdy, because she was looking wilted under the August heat.

Oh!” Sinh Cam exclaimed, sitting up in surprise. “That’s right! A bundle of bones tied up with their own guts, that’s what we say.” “It’s a tiger’s term?” Chih asked. “I thought it was just what the ghosts of the examination hall did to those scholars who who didn’t follow the proper sacrifices . . .” “No, it’s ours,” said Sinh Loan pleasantly. “It’s what we call someone who is a disappointment. Because that’s what we turn them into. Please continue.

You weren't meant to look at people the way that Lieutenant Gatsby looked at Daisy Fay. You couldn't peel your skin back and show them how your heart had gone up in flames, how nothing that had come before mattered and nothing that came afterward mattered as long as you had what you wanted. In that one still moment, it was as if Daisy had, all unknowing, taken Jay Gatsby's heart for her own, and he would spend the rest of his life trying to get it back.

At Gatsby’s, the clock stood at just five shy of midnight the moment you arrived. Crossing from the main road through the gates of his world, a chill swirled around you, the stars came out, and a moon rose up out of the Sound. It was as round as a golden coin, and so close you could bite it. I had never seen a moon like that before. It was no Mercury dime New York moon, but a harvest moon brought all the way from the wheat fields of North Dakota to shine with sweet benevolence down on the chosen and the beautiful.