Shen Tao Quotes

“Or, at the very least, turn me little again.' He wiped his eyes with a sleeve, and stared at the plate of mung bean cakes. 'Little enough that all I wanted to reach for was the banquet table. When all I knew to desire was a sweet cake. And even if everyone punished me, or yelled at me, or hated me, at least back then I didn’t know why. If you can’t turn me into a fish, at least turn me little.”

Desire Loss Of Innocence

Book:The Poet Empress

Source: The Poet Empress

“I am beginning to suspect,' he said, in barely a whisper, 'that you are not afraid enough of me.”

Fear Distrust

Book:The Poet Empress

Source: The Poet Empress

“This whole time in the palace, I may have been occupied with my own survival, but that did not mean I didn’t think of them often. I missed home with a terrible, constant ache—an ache that was not noticed when there were more pressing pains, but when everything was calm again, on a day like this one, it was there waiting for me.”

Love Heartache Homesickness Familial Love

Book:The Poet Empress

Source: The Poet Empress

“It is true, he has suffered, but if everyone who suffered became monsters, the world would be overrun with them.”

Humanity Forgiveness Monster

Book:The Poet Empress

Source: The Poet Empress

“I had not become so wicked in my heart that I had stopped believing people could change. If a gentle child could turn into a monster, I thought, then surely a monster could become gentle again.”

Humanity Monster

Book:The Poet Empress

Source: The Poet Empress

“At last, he lifted his face from his sleeves and wiped furiously at his eyes. His voice was still broken as he said, 'I should have you beheaded for seeing me like this.' It was another flat attempt to get me afraid of him—or perhaps merely a force of habit. But I knew the threat did not have his heart behind it. 'Is that so?' 'Beheaded and worse.' 'Terren, it is not a weakness to be seen.' There were no knives between us now, no fear, not even enough distance for a sparrow to spread its wings. I looked into his eyes, and though they were older and meaner, there was no question they were the same ones as on the boy I’d seen in the meadow. I looked into them and I saw him. Maybe it was possible to love somebody that one hated. Maybe, buried heart-deep, I really did love him. Not the kind of love a wife shared with her husband—that was not possible, after all he’d done to me; I might have borne no scars, but my body still remembered—but the kind of love one human could not help but feel for another when they had to pry away blades to find them. I did not know what else to call it, if not love.”

Humanity Weakness Love For Humanity

Book:The Poet Empress

Source: The Poet Empress

“He kept looking at me, as if expecting me to thank him, or smile, or even acknowledge him, but I had used up all the kind words I had left in me and could not.”

Kindness Cruelty Expectation

Author:Shen Tao

“He never managed to articulate what it was he didn’t know, but I knew his meaning. I don’t know how much suffering is normal. How much was ordinary, expected, the price we paid to live. How much was created by us, needless.”

Life Suffering Human Condition Normalcy

Book:The Poet Empress

Source: The Poet Empress

“The cat lives in pursuit of the mouse; The tree grows in pursuit of the sun. Are we the cat or the tree, pursuers? Are we the wind, born only to run?”

Love Poetry Memories Grief Brotherhood

Book:The Poet Empress

Source: The Poet Empress

“There will always be winning and losing,' she said lightly, 'so long as not all people are born equal.”

Inequality

Book:The Poet Empress

Source: The Poet Empress

“I knew now that one day there was going to be an end to all this suffering, like the sun erasing the cold of night.”

Suffering Hope

Book:The Poet Empress

Source: The Poet Empress

“[...] why are women always expected to love those who would hurt us? To take care of those who would use us, however they please, without the slightest regard for whether we lived or died?”

Womenhood

Book:The Poet Empress

Source: The Poet Empress

“From one branch, two azaleas blooming, Fighting for a piece of the dawn. The roots lie rotten, the leaves die weeping; Come night, all the flowers are gone.”

Poetry Tragedy Brotherhood Power Struggle

Book:The Poet Empress

Source: The Poet Empress

“The Ancestors are fair, after all. To be the judge of whether it is necessary for someone to die, one must love them first. But once there is love, it becomes very hard to still want them dead, does it not?”

Love Hate Empathy Judgement Ancestors

Book:The Poet Empress

Source: The Poet Empress

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