Top 200 Lisa See Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “I thought I could use idealism to solve my inner conflicts, but in healing my inner conflicts I destroyed my idealism.”

— Lisa See

152. “They say nothing to me in a very loud way.”

— Lisa See

153. “They did this to me. They did that to me. A woman who thinks that way will never overcome her anger. You are not being punished for your anger. You’re being punished by your anger.”

— Lisa See

154. “To see Sow Flower’s mother eat that meat was something I’ll never forget. She had been raised to be a fine lady and, as hungry as she was, she did not tear into the food as someone in my family might. She used her chopsticks to pull apart slivers of the pork and lift them delicately to her lips. Her restraint and control taught me a lesson I have not strayed from to this day. You may be desperate, but never let anyone see you as anything less that a cultivated woman.”

— Lisa See

155. “Blessings and worry, happiness and fear – this is a mother’s love.”

— Lisa See

156. “And often it would be a woman who was in her 70s or 80s who would win the beauty contest, because bound feet never age.”

— Lisa See

157. “Finally, the nima returns to our plane. “Wrong cannot be hidden. An outside spirit is insulted because Deh-ja made a mistake in one of her ancestor offerings.”

— Lisa See

158. “As obident as dogs and as stupid as water buffalo.”

— Lisa See

159. “She loves you. She’s just forgotten how to show it.”

— Lisa See

160. “You are very smart. You must be very well educated. You are very pretty. You must be very rich because you’re a writer.”

— Lisa See

161. “A woman isn’t just one thing. The past is in us, constantly changing us. Heartache and failure shift perspectives as do joy and triumphs.”

— Lisa See

162. “But there are certain books I would never put on a Kindle because you want to be able to look at graphs and photos or the footnotes and maps. You can’t see that.”

— Lisa See

163. “You look at me now and see an old face, but once I was beautiful.”

— Lisa See

164. “Stories tell us how we should live.”

— Lisa See

165. “I think to really be literate in nu shu you only need about 600 characters because it is phonetic. So you’re able to then create many words out of one character.”

— Lisa See

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

— Lisa See

167. “My hardcover sales are 17% down in books but up 400% in electronics.”

— Lisa See

168. “Because inside we still carry the dreams of what could have been, of what should have been, of what we wish could still be. This doesn’t mean we aren’t content. We are content, but the romantic longings of our girlhood have never entirely left us. It’s like Yen-Yen said all those years ago: ‘I look in the mirror and I’m surprised by what I see.’ I look in the mirror and still expect to see my Shanghai-girl self- not the wife and mother I’ve become.”

— Lisa See

169. “It used to happen in villages and towns in China that they would have – I guess you’d call them beauty contests – where all of the women of a particular village or town would be seated behind these screens or curtains with only their feet showing.”

— Lisa See

170. “What can we do? We’re only women,” she says. But it’s because I’m a woman, that I dare to go.”

— Lisa See

171. “But anger can be dangerous and have unintended consequences.”

— Lisa See

172. “What the body knows and what the mind chooses to believe are two different things, after all.”

— Lisa See

173. “Every day Fu-shee, the smaller children, and I fan out in the hills around Green Dragon to strip trees of their bark and leaves, dig up roots and search for wild grass. We’ll eat anything, and we have. But you can’t eat a leather belt like it’s a crisp cucumber. You soak it, boil it, and chew on it for days.”

— Lisa See

174. “People write to me all the time, and I write back.”

— Lisa See

175. “Deep love-true-heart love-must grow. Back then I didn’t yet understand the burning kind of love, so instead I thought about the rice paddies I used to see on my daily walks down to the river with my brother when I still had all my milk teeth. Maybe I could make our love grow like a farmer made his crop to grow-through hard work, unwavering will, and the blessings of nature. How funny that I can remember that even now! Waaa! I knew so little about life, but I knew enough to think like a farmer.”

— Lisa See

176. “It took me me many years to realize that my perceptions at this time was completely wrong.”

— Lisa See

177. “Danseuse routine and my fame grew. I could walk into a.”

— Lisa See

178. “Well, Chinese used to be seen as low, right? Working on the railroad, in laundries, and stuff like that. Now they’re seen as smart and wealthy. I mean, isn’t there the stereotype of the model minority? I read an article for school that said people like us – not you, Dr. Rosen – are now labeled as inquisitive, persistent, and ambitious. With ingenuity, fortitude, and cleverness.”

— Lisa See

179. “The government labels the haenyeo a cultural heritage treasure – something dying out that must be preserved, if only in memory. How does it feel to be the last of the last?” If they’re academics, they’ll want to talk about Jeju’s matrifocal culture, explaining, “It’s not a matriarchy. Rather, it’s a society focused on women.”

— Lisa See

180. “Sometimes you must experience heartache to have a treasured result.”

— Lisa See

181. “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

182. “How can the moon be scooped from the water’s surface, or flowers be plucked from the void?”

— Lisa See

183. “As A-ma said, every story, every dream, every waking minute of our lives is filled with one fateful coincidence after another.”

— Lisa See

184. “I grew up believing that rice was to nourish and that tea was to heal. Now I understand that tea is also to connect and to dream. That seduction is deeper and more profound than could happen with any man.”

— Lisa See

185. “Don’t blame yourself for things that maybe happened,” she said.”

— Lisa See

186. “DR. ROSEN: Does the phrase grateful-but-angry have resonance for anyone? You can be grateful you have your mom and dad, because they love you and they’ve given you good lives with all kinds of privilege.”

— Lisa See

187. “People keep asking me why I don’t return to China. I tell them I can’t return to a place I’ve never been. In.”

— Lisa See

188. “My mother had died in the sea, but we could never forget that it gave us life.”

— Lisa See

189. “It takes a lifetime to make a friend, but you can lose one in an hour,” she recites. “Life without a friend is life without sun. Life without a friend is death.”

— Lisa See

190. “As for children, every woman knows the fears and sorrows. Joy is a delicious luxury that we experience most cautiously, for tragedy conceals itself around every corner.”

— Lisa See

191. “Your mother will always exist in you. She will give you strength wherever you go.”

— Lisa See

192. “Joy is a delicious luxury that we experience most cautiously, for tragedy conceals itself around every corner.”

— Lisa See

193. “But when people suggested the haenyeo start using oxygen tanks, she, along with other divers around the island, refused. “Everything we do must be natural,” she’d told the collective, “otherwise we’ll harvest too much, deplete our wet fields, and earn nothing.” There, again, balance.”

— Lisa See

194. “I had to hold on to my anger and my bitterness as a way of honoring those I’d lost.”

— Lisa See

195. “Every mother must leave her children to work, and every mother suffers, bu we do it.”

— Lisa See

196. “Store up good deeds and you will meet with good. Store up evil actions and you will meet with evil.”

— Lisa See

197. “On land, you will be a mother. In the sea, you can be a grieving widow. 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

198. “It is our duty to be keepers and managers of the sea. If we protect our wet fields, they will continue to provide for us.”

— Lisa See

199. “You are a little girl, so you are still in milk days.”

— Lisa See

200. “No man was built to shoulder the full weight of feeding and caring for his family. That was why he had a wife and daughters.”

— Lisa See