You're Asian, you must be smart, right?

"What could you do with a man who looked you squarely in the eye and said he would rather die than be killed in combat, a man who was at least as mature and intelligent as you were and who you had to pretend he was not? What could you say to him?"


"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."


"He says he drives home from work and sits in his driveway for 20 minutes wishing he had a different life."


"The father continued solemnly with his head lowered. 'When you talk to the man upstairs,' he said, 'I want you to tell Him something for me. Tell Him it ain't right for peopel to die when they're young. I mean it. Tell Him if they got to die at all, they got to die when they're old. I want you to tell him that. I don't think He knows it ain't right, because He's supposed to be good and it's been going on for a long, long time. Okay?'"


"He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast...and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever."


" I remember looking down on him from the attic window, crying, and thinking to myself "Never again". If caring for someone meant that they could hurt me so bad, make me feel so horrible, then I never wanted to let someone do that to me again."


"There was so much unhappiness in the world, he reflected, bowing his head dismally beneath the tragic thought, and there was nothing he could do about anybody's, least of all his own."


"If it's meant to be, you don't have to try."


"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."


"Did you hear about the couple that threw themselves off that bridge? They went up there with their dog. They threw the dog off the bridge first, then jumped off together. What I don't get it, why the dog? I mean, no one else could have taken care of it?"


"I just want to call her. I never wanted to call her before, but now I realize I can't call her."


"Maybe someone will treasure you the way you deserve to be treasured."


"For Chinese New Year, she gave auntie and uncle the equivalent of about $100 American each. They were so touched."
"That's kinda weird. They don't even need the money."
"But her heart was in it. Heart is everything."


"His wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of her dock....his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him."


"Struggling conformity."


"He believed in paradise, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning -
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."