Top 50 Zen Cho Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Shameless, impudent, meddling females, who presumed to set at naught the Society’s prohibition on women’s magic, and duped the common people with their potions and cantrips!”

— Zen Cho

2. “Rebirth entailed a true death, the severing of one’s memory and the loss of one’s self.”

— Zen Cho

3. “Love was like swallowing a cili padi whole.”

— Zen Cho

4. “I shall lay the path for you. There is no reason you should run into any trouble, provided you are sensible.” “It sounds perfectly straightforward,” said Sakti, who had never been sensible in her life.”

— Zen Cho

5. “It is a mother’s duty to teach her daughters about the uses of blood, particularly a magical daughter.”

— Zen Cho

6. “But a woman should not marry where there is no respect. Respect is the most important thing.”

— Zen Cho

7. “I felt like a fox backed into a corner, with the yelping of the hounds coming closer.”

— Zen Cho

8. “He was a typical specimen of the younger son in avid pursuit of mediocrity with which the Theurgist’s teemed:.”

— Zen Cho

9. “The first time she saw the boy across the classroom, Ah Lee knew she was in love because she tasted durian on her tongue.”

— Zen Cho

10. “My dear young lady!” This manner of address would have seemed impertinent in any other gentleman of Mr. Wythe’s youth and handsomeness. But his manner possessed such a splendid unconsciousness of these attributes – he spoke so much like a man who believed himself over the hill, and beyond all flirtations – that Prunella was overtaken by an irresistible fit of the giggles.”

— Zen Cho

11. “I can speak four dialects, but none of them is fairy language.”

— Zen Cho

12. “You can’t ever tell people you think you are pretty. Even if you are pretty you have to flutter and be modest. Fortunately here nobody thinks I am pretty, so my thinking I am pretty is almost an act of defiance; it makes me feel quite noble.”

— Zen Cho

13. “Siew Tsin had not given much thought to what happened in the afterlife until the afterlife happened to her.”

— Zen Cho

14. “It looked like all forest spirits – tall, pointy ears, big smile. It didn’t look male or female. Forest spirits don’t have this concept. They say male or female has no meaning. They don’t like to follow rules. Like I said, they are very lazy.”

— Zen Cho

15. “Magic ran in the family. Even her mother’s second cousin, who was adopted, did small spells on the side. She sold these from a stall in Kota Bharu. Her main wares were various types of fruit fried in batter, but if you bought five pisang or cempedak goreng, she threw in a jampi for free.”

— Zen Cho

16. “He would gaze at her with intrigued longan seed eyes.”

— Zen Cho

17. “I might go anywhere and do any magic I pleased if I were Peter, not Prunella.”

— Zen Cho

18. “What a mother hen I am become!” he said soberly. “If I were my old self I should not start at every shadow, and be alarmed when you stumble, but one’s anxiety rises in proportion to one’s incapacity to do anything about it.”

— Zen Cho

19. “A female may be poor or delicate or a spinster, but it does seem ill-advised of Miss Liddiard to combine all three.”

— Zen Cho

20. “Resignation to unhappiness didn’t come naturally – she had to learn it.”

— Zen Cho

21. “It was not a world Siew Tsin would have chosen to live in. But she did not want to be reborn, either, anymore than Junsheng did, anymore than all the other spirits showering gold and favours on hell officials so that they could stay where they were. Rebirth entailed a true death, the severing of one’s memory and the loss of one’s self.”

— Zen Cho

22. “For a celebrity he has an awful excess of sensibility, and is very anxious about one’s opinion of him. Perhaps it comes of being an artist.”

— Zen Cho

23. “The aunts’ conception of the right to privacy went far enough to allow you to close the toilet door when you were peeing, but no further.”

— Zen Cho

24. “What are acquaintance for, if not to supply the pleasures of gossip?”

— Zen Cho

25. “Her opinion is that she did not struggle her way to the august age of forty-three only to have the dignity accorded to her years snatched away from her.”

— Zen Cho

26. “I should advise you not to stop there, but set fire to his house, too, and sell his children to pirates. That is the only way he will learn.”

— Zen Cho

27. “The tabloids wanted to know whether the dragon was receiving benefits. The gossip magazines claimed to have found a woman who was bearing the dragon’s baby. The fashion magazines did spreads on draconian style. This apparently consisted of gaunt models with sunken eyes, swathed in clouds of chiffon and arranged in awkwardly erotic positions on piles of gold coins.”

— Zen Cho

28. “But that was the trouble with children, Sir Stephen reflected. They were confoundedly liable to pattern themselves upon one’s conduct, when one would rather they simply did what they were told.”

— Zen Cho

29. “Why, all the greatest magic comes down to blood,” said Mak Genggang. “And who knows blood better than a woman?”

— Zen Cho

30. “This time, let us hope you will get to be old,” she said. “It is a great suffering to know youth only.”

— Zen Cho

31. “Affection there had always been between them, whatever their disagreements – and there had been more of these than Zacharias had permitted Sir Stephen to know.”

— Zen Cho

32. “She flung the door open with a flourish, revealing a scene of utter pandemonium.”

— Zen Cho

33. “Since the decision to become a parent is invariably self-interested, it is my belief that a parent’s obligation is to the child, and the child’s obligation is to itself.”

— Zen Cho

34. “Hell was hot and full of unkind people in a hurry; there was far too much red tape; and the bureaucrats were all shockingly corrupt.”

— Zen Cho

35. “Zacharias’s study bore the marks of his predecessors, whose taste had run decidedly stoicheiotical. They had had a fondness for skulls with burning lights in their eye sockets, crystal balls in which mysterious shapes came and went, and dark velvet window curtains traced with obscure runes.”

— Zen Cho

36. “She had still had the loved child’s belief that it would not be allowed for anything too bad to happen to her.”

— Zen Cho

37. “Prunella took to the ballrooms of London in the spirit of ruthless calculation of a general entering a battlefield.”

— Zen Cho

38. “Your amoral ingenuity in the pursuit of your interest is perfectly shocking,” said Zacharias severely. “Yes, isn’t it?” said Prunella, pleased.”

— Zen Cho

39. “I am reading a terrible sententious book called The Wedding of Herbert Mimnaugh. Firstly, what sort of a name is Herbert and why would a parent with any trace of natural affection wish to afflict their child with such a name? Herbert’s parents do not feature prominently in the book when this choice alone makes it obvious that they are the most interesting people in it.”

— Zen Cho

40. “She has a passionate hunger for youth.”

— Zen Cho

41. “Zacharias, my dear, I do not believe I am misled by partiality when I say you are impossible to miss in this room,” said Lady Wythe.”

— Zen Cho

42. “Whether I’m a good wife doesn’t have anything to do with what he was like.”

— Zen Cho

43. “It is dreadful when people are good-looking and pay attention to you.”

— Zen Cho

44. “The statement brought up the old anger and confusion, followed by the accustomed guilt, that he should be so ungrateful as to resent the man who had rescued him from bondage. And yet he did resent Sir Stephen, even now.”

— Zen Cho

45. “The damnable thing about Damerell, thought Zacharias, was that he never failed to observe precisely what you would conceal.”

— Zen Cho

46. “She was a hole punched out of a sane world, a channel for the sublime – or the horrific. Through her, the unthinkable was made real.”

— Zen Cho

47. “She was a walking nothing – a hole in the universe, perfect for letting the dead through.”

— Zen Cho

48. “She can’t be a medium,” said Mom. “She graduated from Harvard!”

— Zen Cho

49. “A boy who is not reliable is useless every day of the month. Isn’t it better to have a reliable girl?”

— Zen Cho

50. “The spirit and its chosen one bind their ankles together with red thread. They may take each other’s hands and smile at each other. When they walk down the bridge into the world of the living, they know it won’t be the last time they see one another. The red thread is better than a promise – it’s a guarantee. It means they’ll meet again in the next life. It means they’ll love each other there, too.”

— Zen Cho