Top 60 Stacey Lee Quotes (2025 Update)

2. “We are all ike candles, and whether we are single or joined with another does not affect how brightly we can burn. Respectfully submitted, Miss Sweetie.”

— Stacey Lee

3. “A community is like that shawl, and once you are a part of it, you tie your fate to the threads closest to you.”

— Stacey Lee

4. “It is better to look out a window than into a glass; otherwise all you see is yourself and what’s behind you.”

— Stacey Lee

5. “Sometimes things fall apart so better things can come together.”

— Stacey Lee

6. “You miss being a girl?” I ask her. “Not as much as I thought I would. Just feels like when I’m being a boy, I can cut a wider path.“-Under A Painted Sky.”

— Stacey Lee

7. “Some parents bring their children up and, I suppose, others let them down.”

— Stacey Lee

8. “As long as you have a home, you have a place to plan and dream.”

— Stacey Lee

9. “It is like the moon. We can see it differently by climbing a mountain, but we cannot outrun it. As it should be.”

— Stacey Lee

10. “We carry around the light of our loved ones who have passed. It is they who light the path for us.”

— Stacey Lee

11. “Don’t you get too greedy, Death. You already have taken more than your fair share today. You can’t have me yet.”

— Stacey Lee

12. “Maybe what matters is not so much the path as who walks beside you.”

— Stacey Lee

13. “Justice and fairness are for other people, umbrellas that open only for certain heads. The Chinese just try to stay out of the rain, and if we are caught in a downpour, we make do, knowing that the rain will not last forever.”

— Stacey Lee

14. “The tricky thing about giving opinions is that sometimes they cost you more than you wanted to spend.”

— Stacey Lee

15. “Fly you crows. My father was not a spectacle. He was the greatest man I ever knew. He was my everything.”

— Stacey Lee

16. “While I might not have received a full St. Clare’s education, somehow I picked up something better. Friends who care enough to knock on your pumpkin and make sure you haven’t gone mushy inside.”

— Stacey Lee

17. “The two words that will change your life are “thank you”. Like a candle that can light a thousand more without shortening its own life, appreciation is a gift that, when given, can set the whole world aglow.”

— Stacey Lee

18. “Their deaths might leave a hole in our hearts as deep as the ocean, but it is only because we are as deep as the ocean, and our capacity to love is as high as the sky. The earthquake took much from us. But there is much we can take from it as well.”

— Stacey Lee

19. “Somewhere between right and wrong lies a garden surrounded by thorns, and I have met you there.”

— Stacey Lee

20. “People are like boats, always coming and going. Sometimes never returning. Now that his boat has sailed, the sea is empty for me.”

— Stacey Lee

21. “The sooner you let people be who they want to be, the better for all.”

— Stacey Lee

22. “Maybe life just tastes sweeter after you’ve licked death.”

— Stacey Lee

23. “I scold the worries away. As Ma likes to say, you cannot control the wind, but you can control your sails.”

— Stacey Lee

24. “A blessing loves a good surprise.”

— Stacey Lee

25. “Maybe sorrow and its opposite, happiness, are like dark and light. One can’t exist without the other. And those moments of overlap are like when the moon and the sun share the same sky. A.”

— Stacey Lee

26. “God wouldn’t have given us feet if He didn’t want us to walk. By the same token, why give us a brain if He didn’t want us to have thoughts?”

— Stacey Lee

27. “Breathing is underrated.”

— Stacey Lee

28. “My showmanship only comes out when I hold the violin – with Lady Tin-Yin in my arms, I don’t care who watches. A peace comes over me, something I call my violin calm.”

— Stacey Lee

29. “I pat my mule’s neck and find comfort in the silky tufts of her mane. Father told me not to brood when people judged me for my wrapper, not my filling, or I would spend my whole life in the steamer.”

— Stacey Lee

30. “I kiss him good-bye in my head, bidding farewell to the one I have loved in silence.”

— Stacey Lee

31. “Most people don’t know that heartache smells like blueberries.”

— Stacey Lee

32. “West looks up. ‘This is the best time to hunt, when the animals are out looking for their suppers. ‘Course, with a painted sky, light’s not always good.’ I never heard someone call the sky painted before, but it’s the perfect word. Clouds outlined in gold streak across the firmament, casting uneven shadows over the landscape.”

— Stacey Lee

33. “The knowledge that the person to whom I am writing is also writing just one floor above me makes my shadow sit up straighter, and if shadows had smiles, I might see one reflected there.”

— Stacey Lee

34. “Sometimes, things must get harder before they can change.”

— Stacey Lee

35. “Do not linger in the garden of memories, for there are many traps.”

— Stacey Lee

36. “One should never confuse cost with value.”

— Stacey Lee

37. “I never said you didn’t have a heart. But it would be nice if it beat every now and then.”

— Stacey Lee

38. “I misjudge and our teeth collide, but he gently corrects course instead of pulling away. When he kisses me back, all the hurt inside me floats to the surface and somehow drains away. It makes me want to laugh.”

— Stacey Lee

39. “What good’s a black face if it means I’m just someone else’s property? Why give me these arms and legs just to carry someone else’s load, not my own?”

— Stacey Lee

40. “The poor man, whose intentions were so quickly imagined for him because of the way the light hits his skin.”

— Stacey Lee

41. “We can run the race as well as any man. We only need the opportunity.”

— Stacey Lee

42. “Just like life.” “What?” “The clouds. They never hold still. Sometimes you think you’re seeing one thing, and a second later, the whole picture changes.”

— Stacey Lee

43. “Black women suffered greatly with the failure of Reconstruction, victims of both racism and sexism. Suffrage leaders who had worked toward the idea of universal suffrage antebellum began turning their backs on their black sisters to court the support of white Southern suffragists, whose interest in restoring white supremacy eclipsed their interest in enfranchising women.”

— Stacey Lee

44. “Living people are a dying breed.”

— Stacey Lee

45. “You may no longer be in school, but you must never stop learning. We need to be as smart as the white ghosts.”

— Stacey Lee

46. “You’re growing like a rumor, aren’t you?”

— Stacey Lee

47. “Even if I did climb to the top of that mountain one day, people will never stop seeing my color first, before me.”

— Stacey Lee

48. “As for Headmistress Crouch, I pegged her as the type who wouldn’t have a mate, either because of her exacting standards, or because she ate him for dinner.”

— Stacey Lee

49. “An anxious mind makes lions of tumble weeds.”

— Stacey Lee

50. “A part of me understands the need to keep order, but another part worries that we are being led to fear the wrong things. It’s just like Chinatown and all the laws passed to contain us. We were never the enemy. The enemy was our country’s own fear.”

— Stacey Lee