Shanghai Baby Quotes

Crazy people are considered mad by the rest of the society only because their intelligence isn't understood.

Having a baby is painful in order to show how serious a thing life is.

Her life was like a burst of wild, flowing Chinese calligraphy, written under the influence of alcohol.

Kissing with the tip of the tongue is like ice-cream melting. It was he who taught me that a kiss has a soul and colour of its own.

I think too much, and 99.9 per cent of men don’t want to get involved with a woman who thinks too much.

Love was a miracle the flesh couldn’t copy.

...don't kid yourself. Keep the baby - I have no other advice for you. Children are the best thing in the world.

So often, we're told that women's stories are unimportant. After all, what does it matter what happens in the main room, in the kitchen, or in the bedroom? Who cares about the relationships between mother, daughter, and sister? A baby's illness, the sorrows and pains of childbirth, keeping the family together during war, poverty, or even in the best of days are considered small and insignificant compared with the stories of men, who fight against nature to grow their crops, who wage battles to secure their homelands, who struggle to look inward in search of the perfect man. We're told that men are strong and brave, but I think women know how to endure, accept defeat, and bear physical and mental agony much better than men. The men in my life—my father, Z.G., my husband, my father-in-law, my brother-in-law, and my son—faced, to one degree or another, those great male battles, but their hearts—so fragile—wilted, buckled, crippled, corrupted, broke, or shattered when confronted with the losses women face every day...Our men try to act strong, but it is May, Yen-yen, Joy, and I who must steady them and help them bear their pain, anguish, and shame.

Death’s shadow only fades little by little as time passes. There will never be more than a thin glass barrier between your present and the wreckage of your past

It’s hard to deny life’s little ironies. Wrong place, wrong roles, but united in our commitment to life’s young dream. And yet, our bodies were already tarnished and our minds beyond yelp.

Fear of loneliness is what teaches us to love,

Death is the expression of exhaustion, a solution arrived at rationally once one has known the deepest depths of tiredness.

Tal vez una escritora simplemente inspira confianza debido a su capacidad intuitiva y a su comprensión.

Sabia que estaba algo tomada, estar un poco borracha es agradable, todo se puede ver más claro, como cuando la niebla se dispersa.

On the surface we're two utterly different types. I'm full of energy and ambition, and see the world as a scented fruit just waiting to be eaten. He is introspective, romantic and for him life is a cake laced with arsenic, every bite poisons him a little more. But our differences only increased our mutual attraction, like the inseparable north and south magnetic poles. We rapidly fell in love.

Kundera dijo que en el siglo XXI todos serán escritores, con sólo tomar la pluma y escribir lo que se piensa. El deseo de compartir sus sentimientos es una necesidad espiritual de todos los seres humanos.

In my novel, a couple hold each other close as a raging fire spreads through their room. They know they can’t leave. Fire has sealed off all windows and corridors, leaving them only one thing to do: make love madly in the heart of the blaze.

What I saw was a face which couldn’t be called pretty, but one also not easily forgotten: pointed features, oblique eyebrows, pale skin with slightly enlarged pores, and expensive lipstick that threatened to drip off her lips. Once beautiful, but now a dream in which willow branches have withered, clouds have scattered and drifting petals have fallen to the ground. A face that has been corroded by pleasure, impetuosity and dreams, each of which has left scars on it, leaving it sharp yet worn, capable of hurting, yet vulnerable as well.

Little Nicky heads to the Badlands to see the show for himself. The Western Roads are outside his remit as a U.S. Treasury agent, but he knows the men he wants are its denizens. Standing on the corner of the Great Western and Edinburgh Roads, a sideshow, a carnival of the doped, the beaten, and the crazed. He walks round to the Avenue Haig strip and encounters the playground of Shanghai’s crackpots, cranks, gondoos, and lunatics. He’s accosted constantly: casino touts, hustling pimps, dope dealers; monkeys on chains, dancing dogs, kids turning tumbles, Chinese ‘look see’ boys offering to watch your car. Their numbers rise as the Japs turn the screws on Shanghai ever tighter. Half-crazy American missionaries try to sell him Bibles printed on rice paper—saving souls in the Badlands is one tough beat. The Chinese hawkers do no better with their porno cards of naked dyed blondes, Disney characters in lewd poses, and bare-arsed Chinese girls, all underage. Barkers for the strip shows and porno flicks up the alleyways guarantee genuine French celluloid of the filthiest kind. Beggars abound, near the dealers and bootleggers in the shadows, selling fake heroin pills and bootleg samogon Russian vodka, distilled in alleyways, that just might leave you blind. Off the Avenue Haig, Nicky, making sure of his gun in its shoulder holster, ventures up the side streets and narrow laneways that buzz with the purveyors of cure-all tonics, hawkers of appetite suppressants, male pick-me-ups promising endless virility. Everything is for sale—back-street abortions and unwanted baby girls alongside corn and callus removers, street barbers, and earwax pickers. The stalls of the letter writers for the illiterate are next to the sellers of pills to cure opium addiction. He sees desperate refugees offered spurious Nansen passports, dubious visas for neutral Macao, well-forged letters of transit for Brazil. He could have his fortune told twenty times over (gypsy tarot cards or Chinese bone chuckers? Your choice). He could eat his fill—grilled meat and rice stalls—or he could start a whole new life: end-of-the-worlders and Korean propagandists offer cheap land in Mongolia and Manchukuo.

She believes in these words: suck dry the juice of life like a leech, including its secret happiness and hurt, spontaneous passion and eternal longing.

Tian Tian'in de gözlerinin kapalı olduğunu gördüm. Kırmızı şarap içip üflemek insanın uykusunu getirir ve onun da çoktan uykuya daldığından eminim. Tian Tian gürültülü sesler ve hayalet gölgeler arasında uykuya dalmayı daha kolay bulur.

Akılsızca bir seçim yapmıştım. Tohumla çiçeği ayırt edememiştim. Ve kadının erkeğini seçmekteki hatası, onun en büyük utancıdır.

Bu yüzden iyi bir yazar olacaksın. Bir yazar geçmişi sözcükleriyle gömer.

İkimiz de biraz şaşkındık. Tian Tian'in yatakta gözleri kapalı beni dinlediğini ve telefonun ucundaki Alman'ın neden beni aradığını biliyordum. Böylesi hassas bir durum tıpkı haşhaşlı brownie gibiydi. Öyle önemli bir tadı yoktu,hatta bir parça fazla yemek bile tadı hakkındaki yorumunuza bir şey katmazdı, ama o üçüncü ısırıştan sonra hoş olmayan ve sizi salıveren bir şey olurdu. Ve belki de derinlerde bir yerlerde bunu şiddetle arzulayan türde bir kızdım.

Yanıma uzandı. Başı, saçımın üzerindeydi. Çıplak bedenlerimizle çarşafa sarınıp sigara içtik. Gözlerimizin önünde boşluğu, sigara dumanı tam zamanında doldurdu, ve konuşmak zorunda kalmadık. Bazen insan bir ses çıkarmak istemez. Bunun yerine aklı hareketsiz, sessiz bir filme dalar.

Giyinmek için kalktığımda üzerimi bir keyifsizlik kaplamıştı. Şehvet ve orgazm geçmişti. Film bitip izleyiciler toplu halde çıkmaya başladığında, tüm duyduğunuz, eski halini koltukların tıkırtısı, ayak sesleri, temizlenen boğazlardır. Karakterler, öykü ve müzik yok olmuştur. Ama Tian Tian'ın yüzünün beynimde gidiş gelişi bir türlü yok olmayacaktır.

O anda, tek istediğim birkaç gram otokontroldü. Tam o sırada ondan uzaklabilirdim ve daha sonra olanların hiçbiri olmazdı. Ama hiç de önlem seven biri değildim, olmak da istemiyordum. Yirmi beş yaşındaydım ve asla güvende olmayı özlemedim. "İnsan her şeyi yapabilir, yapılması gerekenkerli ve yapılmaması gerekenleri." Dali'nin ifadesi böyle bir şeydi.

So often we're told that women's stories are unimportant. After all, what does it matter what happens in the main room, in the kitchen, or in the bedroom? Who cares about relationships between mother, daughter, and sister? A baby's illness, the sorrows and pains of childbirth, keeping the family together during war, poverty, or even in the best of days are considered small and insignificant compared with the stories of men, who fight against nature to grow their crops, who wage battles to secure their homelands, who struggle to look inward in search of the perfect man. We're told that men are strong and brave, but I think women know how to endure, accept defeat, and bear physical and mental agony much better than men.

Sentada enfrente de mis borradores, de repente me invadió el pánico como cuando un mago descubre que acaba de perder sus poderes por completo. Ahora simplemente no podía penetrar en el mundo distante de las letras, a mi alrededor ocurrían cambios incesantemente, como las pequeñas ondas del agua. Siempre había pensado en un triunfo repentino, como Alí Baba que sólo con leer un conjuro abrió la puerta de la cueva del tesoro, como Bill Gates que en una noche se convirtió en archimillonario, como Gong Li que a mi edad ya había subyugado a decenas de millones de hombres blancos con su magnífica belleza sin hablar una sola palabra de inglés.

Shanghai is a city obsessed with pleasure.

Back before we began, we’d lost the chance of a chance. Time’s high-speed train whistled and rumbled through modern tower blocks into the distance. My tears meant nothing. The joys and sorrows of any one person mean nothing, because the train’s massive steel wheels never stop spinning. This is the secret that terrifies everyone in the cities in this fucking material age.

It was the worst picture she had seen in her life. It was worse than the crying baby in Shanghai. ‘Sometimes we need to see why we fight,’ said the burglar vicar gently. ’We need to see what God sees. Then we can understand just a little better His wrath, and His justice, and His love.’ He slipped the photograph from her hand, put it in the folder, slipped the folder from her. She pulled the pillow over her face and wept. She’d not forget that image, not for the rest of her life. She cried herself deaf for the child and for Arthur Vance; for Murray whose Rocket Kid could not save this child, and for William, because she finally understood what it felt like to be eviscerated. She wept that she could not go and die for this boy. ‘I’m utterly useless!’ she screamed into the pillow, and finally came to her defeated senses. A good cry, and she did not feel better. ‘You are hardly useless,’ said the Burglar Vicar. ‘Oh really? I can’t even sit up.’ ‘You can pray.’ ‘How do you know it does any good?’ ‘It’s better than moping, which does no good at all.” She supposed it would be better to pray than to mope. The Shrew said prayer held them to their tasks. She said she saw before her eyes that it worked. ‘Yes, yes — I can pray!