Culture Commentary and Miscellaneous Musings
She’d imagine how it would be, wakeful in bed, and sometimes in quiet moments, walking through Rennes or in long, tedious councils. How warm it was, to be so near someone else, how it burned to touch. His knowing eyes and knowing hands, the calluses of rein and swordhilt. How he’d taken the sacrifice upon himself, a gift she had never wanted because she’d never been able to imagine it.
page 228-229
Cora Zeng does not get angry. Not because Auntie Lois says anger is a sin, or because Delilah could never be bothered with such an emotion, or because Cora is sage enough to understand that it is a pointless, destructive feeling. Cora Zeng does not get angry because anger always melts through her fingers until it’s a pool of anguish under her feet. There is not enough oxygen inside Cora to keep anger burning. No matter how hard she tries, she can only wield her sharpest thoughts against her own flesh. She knows, on some level that most of the problems in her life are her own fault in one way or another. Anger is just one of of those thoughts that can never quite sink its teeth into her–she is not solid enough, and its jaws close around nothing at all.
page 90
Like a good book or an incredible outfit, being on vacation transports you into another version of yourself.
Prologue
But their Chinese was no better and no worse than mine. I had also used the Integrated Chinese textbook. I, too, knew Wang Peng. We were on the same itinerary so that we could fill in the same gaping lack, and the only thing that would resolve this was the passage of time—ten weeks in Taipei, immersed in our mother tongue—until we returned with perfect tones spilling out of our mouths, and we were no longer so bad at being Chinese.
page 3
