Top 200 Lisa See Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.”

— Lisa See

Featured in: Reading Quotes

2. “There is no life without death. That is the true meaning of yin and yang.”

— Lisa See

3. “Seeing something once is better than hearing about it a hundred times. Doing something once is better than seeing it a hundred times.”

— Lisa See

4. “I love research. I’d go so far as to say I’m a research fanatic.”

— Lisa See

5. “One day – and it only takes one moment to change your life forever –.”

— Lisa See

6. “People say you need to be strong, smart, and lucky to survive hard times, war, a natural disaster, or physical torture. But I say emotional abuse – anxiety, fear, guilt, and degradation – is far worse and much harder to survive.”

— Lisa See

7. “When people are alive they love, when they die, they keep loving. If love ends when person dies, that is not real love.”

— Lisa See

8. “One mistake can change the course of your life. You can never return to your original path or go back to the person you were.”

— Lisa See

9. “People come in and out of our lives, and the true test of friendship is whether you can pick back up right where you left off the last time you saw each other.”

— Lisa See

10. “I’ve had to think about the dark shadow side of friendship. This is the person who knows and loves you best, which means she knows all the ways to hurt and betray you.”

— Lisa See

11. “Confucius didn’t care much for women: When a girl, obey your father; when a wife, obey your husband; when a widow, obey your son.”

— Lisa See

12. “May and I are sisters. We’ll always fight, but we’ll always make up as well. That’s what sisters do: we argue, we point out each other’s frailties, mistakes, and bad judgment, we flash the insecurities we’ve had since childhood, and then we come back together. Until the next time.”

— Lisa See

13. “Anyone who says that women do not have influence in men’s decisions makes a vast and stupid mistake.”

— Lisa See

14. “My writing is soaked with the tears of my heart, An invisible rebellion that no man can see. Let our life stories become tragic art. Oh, Mama, oh, sisters, hear me, hear me.” The.”

— Lisa See

15. “Yao Niang, the first tiny-footed lady. When that woman.”

— Lisa See

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

— Lisa See

17. “Parents die, daughters grow up and marry out, but sisters are for life.”

— Lisa See

18. “It’s said that great sorrow is no more than a reflection of one’s capacity for great joy.”

— Lisa See

19. “You’ll never get a marriage proposal if you have to rely on your needlework.”

— Lisa See

20. “You can’t learn about living unless you live. You can’t live unless you take a chance; and your living is limited by the chances you take.”

— Lisa See

21. “It’s fair to say I don’t know what I’m doing. I like to plot my life and proceed carefully, but life doesn’t always follow a plan.”

— Lisa See

22. “What was the purpose of being wrapped like a present if you had no feelings for the person you were being given to?”

— Lisa See

23. “The lotus symbolizes purity, because it rises out of the mud but looks pristine.”

— Lisa See

24. “As she spoke, I wanted to cry, because sometimes it’s just so damn hard to be a mother. We have to wait and wait and wait for our children to open their hearts to us. And if that doesn’t work, we have to bide our time and look for the moment of weakness when we can sneak back into their lives and they will see us and remember us for the people who love them unconditionally.”

— Lisa See

25. “A brave heart? It feels like a swollen and aching thing in my chest.”

— Lisa See

26. “Model communes are the ones where the leaders lie the best and the biggest.”

— Lisa See

27. “If you try to live, you can live on well.”

— Lisa See

28. “To believe in dreams is to spend half your life asleep.”

— Lisa See

29. “The fallen leaves return to the root.”

— Lisa See

30. “I thought I could use idealism to solve my inner conflicts, but in healing my inner conflicts I destroyed my idealism.”

— Lisa See

31. “Parents exist in children,” Grandmother said to bolster my confidence. “Your mother will always exist in you. She will give you strength wherever you go.”

— Lisa See

32. “You are not being punished for your anger. You’re being punished by your anger.”

— Lisa See

33. “When you lose your home country, what do you preserve and what do you abandon?”

— Lisa See

34. “I am an eighth Chinese, and I come from a large Chinese-American family in Los Angeles.”

— Lisa See

35. “Hyacinth bean and papayas, long vines, deep roots. Palm trees outside the garden walls, with deep roots, stand a thousand years.”

— Lisa See

36. “Always remember If you don’t love tea, you can’t make good tea.”

— Lisa See

37. “I have a whole life to tell; I have nothing left to lose and few to offend.”

— Lisa See

38. “When you do things in a soft way, you make the other people believe they’ve thought up something to do for you, when actually you’re directing them.” Later, Ruth.”

— Lisa See

39. “Men are so sure of themselves, and they have such courage and conviction. They believe-truly believe- that they can make things happen just by speaking the words, and in many cases they can.”

— Lisa See

40. “The greatest calling of all is to have a literary life.”

— Lisa See

41. “To understand everything is to forgive.”

— Lisa See

42. “What husband wants a wife who thinks she’s smarter than he is?”

— Lisa See

43. “How can I help change things if I sit by and do nothing?”

— Lisa See

44. “What better place to look for trash than in America – the land of consumption and waste?”

— Lisa See

45. “You cannot refuse to eat just because there’s a chance of being choked.”

— Lisa See

46. “While she is lovely, we need to remember that her face is not what distinguishes her. Her beauty is a reflection of the virtue and talent she keeps inside.”

— Lisa See

47. “But why bother trying to turn a monkey into a goat?”

— Lisa See

48. “People are shaped by the earth and water around them.”

— Lisa See

49. “The machete has been tested, and the rice already cooked.”

— Lisa See

50. “Your tears will be added to the oceans of salty tears that wash in great waves across our planet. This I know. If you try to live, you can live on well.”

— Lisa See