Yk_ Quotes

And in the end, I think, we're all just trying to survive, aren't we?

Was there anything more intimate than being truly seen?

There are so many things to know and learn. She reads...and finds comfort in the fact that she will never run out of books.

Men strolled through life with a wallet in their pants, and women were saddled with children, the map, the bag, the half-empty water bottles. Resentment

That's the beginning of how it all changes. We become survivors or not.

Writing is a form of running away. Running away to a place you made with your own hand.

A heart filled with light will always be in the middle of darkness. But, once it shines more brightly, there's nothing to be afraid. You, are the one who will conquer it.

Oh Eli Yanakakis, son of Rex, who started YK, who-oh my God-he's been underground for six years..." (page 126)

Do you know my best quality?” she asks. ”Of your many, I could not say, my darling.” ”I see the best in people. I fall in love with people when I see a window into their beings, their shining moments. I’ve fallen in love with so many people but the trouble is I fall out of love so quickly too. I see the worst in them just as easily. ”Do you know I fell in love with you right away? That day at the Trotters’ I had noted you because you were new, of course, and then you sat down at the piano, and you played a few notes, but you played them so well, with no self consciousness, and no idea that anyone might be listening. It was in that room off the garden and you were the only one there. I was passing through on the way to the ladies’ room and saw you there. I fell in love with you right then, and so I slipped my drink all over myself so I could meet you.”

[Hilary] ...after you left, I didn't understand what had happened. David, I don't hate you and I don't blame you. I don't think you were happy, and I wasn't that happy either. We were just coasting, seeing what would happen, and then you pulled the plug. Right?

This is the Hong Kong curse that expat housewives talk about in hushed voices: the man who takes to Hong Kong the wrong way. He moves from an egalitarian American society, where he’s supposed to take out the trash every day and help with the dinner dishes, to a place where women cater to his every desire—a secretary who anticipates his needs before he does, a servant in the house who brings him his espresso just the way he likes it and irons his boxers and his socks—and the local population is not as sassy with the comebacks as where he came from, so, of course, he then looks for that in every corner of his life.

[Margaret] went to a talk on parenting at the end of the school year where the speaker had said that doing good things, charitable things, was actually a selfish act, because it made you feel good. She has been mulling that ever since. Should she do something selfless, something good? Should she reach out to someone who really needs her forgiveness? Would this make her feel better?

Wasn't love always some form of narcissism anyway?

Will muddles his way through the club and into the upper tier, where the boxes are filled with chattering people in jackets and silky dresses. He comes through the door of number 28 and Trudy spies him right away, pounces on him, and introduces him to everybody. There are Chinese from Peru, Polish by way of Tokyo, a Frenchman married to Russian royalty. English is spoken.

Every day leaflets fall from the sky, Japanese planes whirring overhead and letting loose propaganda, all over the colony, telling the Chinese and the Indians not to fight, to join with the Japanese in a “Greater Far Eastern Co-Prosperity Sphere.” They’ve been collecting them as they fall on the ground, stacking them in piles, and Trudy wakes up on Christmas Day and declares a project, to make wallpaper out of them. In their dressing gowns, they put on Christmas carols, make hot toddies, and—in a fit of wild, Yuletide indulgence—use all the flour for pancakes, and paste the leaflets on the living room wall—a grimly ironic decoration. One has a drawing of a Chinese woman sitting on the lap of a fat Englishman, and says the English have been raping your women for years, stop it now, or something to that effect, in Chinese, or so Trudy says.

Angeline, you could go with Will and Ned, since Frederick is English. You’re counted as English, then. You have your marriage certificate somewhere, don’t you? I’ll be fine out here without you. So many family friends have offered to take me in, I won’t be alone.” Trudy strokes her friend’s arm.

They gather their belongings and pick their way in the gathering dusk through the streets. Refuse has started to build up on the curbs and a low, persistent stench rises from the road. They see a car speed up as it approaches them, and in it a Chinese man averting his gaze. They are in sight of the lorry and Will remarks that the doors are open when they hear it. Evers’s head cocks up to the whining sound, and Will watches him watch the first bomb come down and destroy a building not fifty feet away. It is as if it is in slow motion. Evers yells, “Watch out!” and dives for the ground.

Victor and Melody Chen lived in the Mid-Levels, in an enormous white two-story house on May Road. There was a driveway, with potted plants lining the sides. Inside, there was the quiet, efficient buzz of a household staffed with plentiful servants. Claire had taken a bus, and when she arrived, she was perspiring after the walk from the road to the house. The amah had led her to a sitting room, where she found a fan blowing blessedly cool air. A houseboy adjusted the drapes so that she was properly shaded. Her blue linen skirt, just delivered from the tailor, was wrinkled, and she had on a white voile blouse that was splotched with moisture. She hoped the Chens would allow her some time to compose herself. She shifted, feeling a drop of perspiration trickle down her thigh.

Angeline says that we’re not doing very well. Apparently they expected the Japs from the south, by the sea, but they came from the north instead and just breezed right through the defenses there. And it’s really awful outside.” Her voice hiccups. “I saw a dead baby on a pile of rubbish this morning as I came here. It’s all around, the rubbish and the corpses, I mean, and they’re burning it so it smells like what I imagine hell smells like. And I saw a woman being beaten with bamboo poles and then dragged off by her hair. She was half being dragged, half crawling along, and screaming like the end of the world. Her skin was coming off in ribbons. You’re supposed to wear sanitary pads so that . . . you know . . . if a soldier tries to . . . Well, you know. The locals and the Japanese both are looting anything that’s not locked down, and thieving and generally being impossible. They’re all over the place in Kowloon, running amok. We’re thinking about moving out to one of the hotels, just so we’re more in the middle of things, and we can see people and get more information. The Gloucester is packed to the rafters but my old friend Delia Ho has a room at the Repulse Bay and says we can have it because she’s leaving to go to China. We can share the room with Angeline, don’t you think? And apparently, the American Club has cots out and people are staying there as well. They have a lot of supplies, I suppose. Americans always do. Everyone wants to be around other people.

That's the shock, and the surprise, to a lot of repatriates: No one back home cares. There's an initial, shallow interest in what life is like abroad, but most Americans aren't actually interested, at all.

Australia No written reviews. Canada No written reviews. India Player1YK Abhimanyu Mars OrangeBobcat

What else is there to think about mate? Times like these, you get to the basics - what you eat, where you shit, finding a place to sleep. It's what keeps you sane.

This was what bothered her: the presumption of the expatriates in Hong Kong. It is unspoken, except by the most obnoxious, but it is there, in their actions.

Yk who you are.

This is the beginning of a new time,” Torius said, “a great moment for us. One of us has learnt the Tongue and freed a princess. I have saved him and killed the guards. No longer will we be slaves. No longer will the guards tell us what to do. No longer will we listen. We will fight till we get what we want!” A roar exploded from the children around him. “This is a revolution,” Torius went on. “You all remember the pain that you have felt when the guards have touched you. You all know the shame we carry within us at being treated like this. No more! We will stand!

She will toss the leaves in a wooden bowl with a micro spray of olive oil, a drop of balsamic vinegar, the insanely expensive balsamic vinegar that she bought at the gourmet store, so viscous it drips in a slow, thick stream. A tomato. A Persian cucumber. These will emerge, pristine, from her tiny refrigerator, chilled, perfect. She will slice them thinly and fan them into beautiful patterns, a vegetable mandala, courtesy of the mandoline, a feast for the eyes. She will hand-crumple Parmigiano Reggiano onto the top, and then, from on high, she will brandish the mill and grind coarse crystals of pink salt form the Himalayas into fine, sparkly shavings that will float, like snowflakes, onto the pale green surface of her salad.

yk{ íkku Awt Vfeh Ãký ‘½kÞ÷’, [k f h u k ç k k Ëþkn h k¾w t Aw t .

Writing is a form of running away. Running away to a place you made by your own hand.

The feeling she has is most unexpected. The oddest thing. She feels no distress or worry. Instead, she senses a dim, faint feeling that rises from some unknown place in her heart, rising slowly and blossoming into something that she might call relief.

She remembers that when she first moved here, a woman who had been in Hong Kong for six years had confided plaintively: "I feel like my real life is on pause. It's nice here, and I like all the help and the vacations, but I'm ready now. I'm ready to resume my real life, and now all I feel like I'm doing is waiting.

She thinks about that now. Is grief the price? Why does love have to be so costly? The benefits she has reaped from this love, have they been enough? When she had just Daisy toddling around, an older woman had said to her, “I think by the time they’re two, kids have repaid their parents for everything. They give us so much joy in just those first two years of their life. All the worrying and misery that might come after is just paying the piper.” Margaret, then a frizzled first-time mom, wondered what the woman was talking about. But now she thinks she knows. She’s had these moments, a nestling child in her arms, a kiss and a deep inhale of the heady sent of a sleeping baby, a laugh of pure joy shared with her husband at something funny that has been said by an unknowing innocent – she has had so, so many of these moments. Her life has been rich with those moments. She is grateful for them. She wants to remember and honor them. This is such a moment, she realizes. Sitting here, on the beach, with the warm sand beneath and the bright sun above, with Clarke and two of her children present, she feels something like a brief moment of contentment. You don’t win anything for being the saddest the longest, Dr. Stein has said. There’s no prize for being the most miserable. You are not betraying anyone by trying to live a better life. You are not giving up on anyone. I’m not telling you to be happy. I’m telling you that it’s okay to have moments when you’re not sad. You can laugh, maybe once a month, maybe twice. It’s okay. Here’s the thing. You think only one specific event, one miracle, will make things better, but actually life will get better if you only let it. You have to let life get better. You have to for your family’s sake, and for your sake. You don’t think your happiness matters, but it does. It matters for your family. They can’t be happy unless you see that you have the ability to be. Time will help. It can be agonizingly slow, but it always does. Forward. Onward. Those are the directions she has to follow. Remember this moment, she thinks fiercely. Hold onto it. - The Expatriates

Take your time and Hurry Up!

What is making him uneasy is his own unwillingness to compromise and where it might be coming from - the niggling feeling that he cannot shake off: that he is calling his reluctance integrity, but what it might be is simply cowardice.

It is easier to brand her a villain and go back to camp, play the victim, lick his wounds. This is what he does. There is no glory in it, but there is survival. And, he realizes, that is what they are playing at now.

I forgive you, she says. I understand. He clings to this. Hears her say it over and over. How can he leave her now?

And a simple knowledge is what sustains her through all of this: that all she needs to do is step out on to that street and she will dissolve into it, be absorbed in its rhythms and become, easily, a part of the world.

When she sees her mother after a long period, like at the airport---she is always shocked for a moment at the stranger who is waving at her, that stoutish matron who looks wrinkled and untidy, tired from the long flight

The number of people walking through life with sub-par emotional intelligence was incredible.

This is what parents did. They told you stories about children and were outraged or delighted by some odd detail and were perplexed if you were not appropriately outraged or delighted as well. They lived so entirely in that sphere, that sphere of people with kids, that they forgot that people could have no kids and have no idea what they were talking about.

In a world of echoes, be the silent whisper that resonates.

People have always expected me to be bad and thoughtless and shallow, and I do my best to accommodate their expectations. I sink to their expectations, one might say. I think its the ultimate suggestibility of most of us. We are social beings. We live in a social world with other people and so we wish to be as they see us, even if it is detrimental to ourselves.

She remembers having moments when she felt lifted with gratitude. It was dizzyingly gratifying to feel that you wanted nothing more than what you had at that moment: a hot latte with a full head of foam, and a newspaper filled with facts you were about to learn, a man sitting next to you who wanted to be there.

Venäjän, Syyrian ja Yhdysvaltain johtajat kiistelevät siitä, kuka saa parhaiten kiinni rikollisia. YK:n pääsihteeri päättää panna johtajat testiin. Hän päästää kaniinin metsään ja kehottaa miehiä pyydystämään sen. Amerikkalaisten tiimi lähtee metsään. He sijoittavat eläinilmiantajia eri puolille metsää. He kuulustelevat kaikkia kasvi- ja kivikuntaan kuuluvia todistajia. Kolmen kuukauden tiiviin tutkinnan jälkeen he ilmoittavat, että kaniineja ei ole olemassa. On Syyrian tiimin vuoro mennä metsään. Kun kahdessa viikossa ei löydy yhtään johtolankaa, syyrialaiset polttavat metsän ja kaiken sen mukana, myös kaniinin. Se oli vaarallinen kapinallinen, he kirjoittavat raporttiinsa. Venäjän tiimi lähtee metsään viimeisenä. He ilmestyvät kahden tunnin kuluttua mukanaan pahoin piesty karhu. Karhu mylvii: "Hyvä on! Myönnetään! Olen kaniini! Olen kaniini!"