Tan 103
“I always thought it mattered, to know what is the worst possible thing to happen to you, to know how you can avoid it, to not be drawn by the magic of the unspeakable."
Tan 103
"She disappeared and became a ghost."
Tan 104
"They declared her a Displaced Person, lost in a sea of immigration categories."
Tan 105
"My mother often looked this way, waiting for something to happen, wearing this scared look. Only later she lost the struggle to keep her eyes open."
Tan 108
"My mother dropped my hand and covered her body with her hands as if she were naked, unable to do anything else."
Tan 110
"Someone was killing. Someone was being killed. Screams and shouts, a mother had a sword high above a girl’s head and was starting to slice her life away, first a braid, then her scalp, an eyebrow, a toe, a thumb, the point of her cheek, the slant of her nose, until there was nothing left, no sounds."
Tan 111
"I knew this was serious becasue everything they said was unnecessary but spoken with solemn importance. ‘It is now four o’clock,’ said Uncle Canning"
Tan 112
"my mother fell apart, not all at once, but piece by piece, like plates falling off a shelf one by one."
Tan 115
"I was crying for joy with them, because I had been wrong."
Tan 115
"And the girl grabbed her mother’s hand and pulled her through the wall”