Shelley Parker-Chan Books & Quotes

“Desire is the cause of all suffering. All Zhu had ever desired was to live. Now she felt the pure strength of that desire inside her, as inseparable as her breath or qi, and knew she would suffer from it. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the awful magnitude of the suffering that would be required to achieve greatness in the chaotic, violent world outside.”

Desire Suffering Faith Determination

Book:She Who Became the Sun

Source: She Who Became the Sun

“At some point, though the girl couldn't remember exactly when, she had become the only girl in the village...If a family had a son and a daughter and two bites of food, who would waste one on a daughter?”

Poverty Feminism Inequality Womens Rights

Book:She Who Became the Sun

Source: She Who Became the Sun

“However, having grown up on a peasant's monotonous diet, and with only a half-formed suspicion that better things might exist, her imagination was limited to the dimension of quantity.”

Poverty Inequality Women S Rights

Book:She Who Became the Sun

Source: She Who Became the Sun

“If you want a fate other than what Heaven gave you, you have to want that other fate. You have to struggle for it. Suffer for it.”

Suffering Destiny Fate Choosing Your Path

Book:She Who Became the Sun

Source: She Who Became the Sun

“It made no more sense to doubt the inevitability of fate than it did to doubt the color of the sky”

Fate Confidence

Book:She Who Became the Sun

Source: She Who Became the Sun

“Pure emotions are the luxury of children and animals”

Feelings Human Emotions

Book:She Who Became the Sun

Source: She Who Became the Sun

“But you know what's worse than suffering? Not suffering, because you're not even alive to feel it.”

Pain Self Help Depression

Book:She Who Became the Sun

Source: She Who Became the Sun

“There was nothing in her imagination to replace the formless, unchanging days of starvation. She clung to life because it seemed to have value, even if only to her.”

Hunger Inequality Womens Empowerment

Book:She Who Became the Sun

Source: She Who Became the Sun

“Children had taken pleasure in whispering to one another. That in other, worse-off villages, neighbors would swap their youngest children to eat... But now, seeing her father avoiding her gaze, the girl realized it wasn't just a story...In that one terrible moment, she knew what her fate of nothing meant.”

Inequality Women S Rights Starvation

Book:She Who Became the Sun

Source: She Who Became the Sun

“A woman gambles all of herself, body and future, when she marries. That's more courageous than any risk a bureaucrat takes when it concerns only his face, or his wealth”

Feminism Women Empowerment Womens Rights

Book:She Who Became the Sun

Source: She Who Became the Sun

“For all he had acknowledged her as a being capable of desire, he hadn't seen her reality; that she was a woman, trapped within the narrow confines of a woman's life, and everything that could be wanted was all equally impossible”

Feminism Women Empowerment Women S Rights

Book:She Who Became the Sun

Source: She Who Became the Sun

“What I want has nothing to do with who wins." -Ouyang”

War Fantasy Betrayal

Book:She Who Became the Sun

Source: She Who Became the Sun

“Knowing the cause of their suffering, the peasant cursed their barbarian emperor in his distant capital in the north. As with any two like things connected by a thread of qui, whereby the actions of one influence the other even at a distance, so an emperor's worthiness determines the fate of the land he rules.”

Lgbt Women S Rights Asian Philosophy Lgbt Rights Womens Empowerment

Book:She Who Became the Sun

Source: She Who Became the Sun

“But how to hurt someone who was made only of pain?”

Pain Hurt

Book:She Who Became the Sun

Source: She Who Became the Sun

“But it was strange how shame was something you never became inured to: each time hurt just as much as the first”

Pain Hurt Shame Wise Sayings Chinese Philosophy

Book:She Who Became the Sun

Source: She Who Became the Sun

“Destroying what someone else cherished never brought back what you yourself had lost. All it did was spread grief like a contagion”

Life Lessons Hurt Revenge

Book:She Who Became the Sun

Source: She Who Became the Sun

Shelley Parker-Chan Books

She Who Became the Sun

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