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Quote by Jenny Han

Work

The Summer I Turned Pretty

This novel follows the story of a young girl spending her summers at a beach house, where she navigates the complexities of family dynamics and forms deep friendships and her first romantic experiences. more

Author

Jenny Han
Jenny Han

Jenny Han is a renowned writer known for her young adult literature. Her works are highly appreciated by young readers for their unique perspective and heartfelt emotional descriptions. more

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“Living in the moment is not an excuse to be a ne'er-do-well. A person can give up on life or immerse themselves in all matters that are essential to express our humanity. I will accept both the joy and the responsibility of living a meaningful existence. A person’s ultimate expression of his or her being will exhibit itself in their passionate activities including those involving work, art, nature, friendship, and love.”

“I strongly believe that success is directly proprotional to one's ability to be simple and comfortable. In fact, simplicity and comfort have a multiplication effect, thus increasing the chances of expedited and sustained success.”

“Instead, I thought about the word profile and what a weird double meaning it had. We say we’re looking at a person’s profile online, or say a newspaper is writing a profile on someone, and we assume it’s the whole them we’re seeing. But when a photographer takes a picture of a profile, you’re only seeing half the face. Like with Sparrow, whoever he was. It’s never the way you would remember seeing them. You never remember someone in profile. You remember them looking you in the eye, or talking to you. You remember an image that the subject could never see in a mirror, because you are the mirror. A profile, photographically, is perpendicular to the person you know.”

“You do not respond to your critic’s statements of wrongdoing with denial, defensiveness, or countermanipulation with criticisms of your own. Instead, you break the manipulative cycle by actively prompting further criticism about yourself or by prompting more information about statements of “wrongdoing” from the critical person in an unemotional, low-key manner.”

“However unpopular Yeltsin may have been, traditionalist loyalty was already being forcefully redirected toward the new powers of the presidency. There is a story that so clearly and beautifully illustrates this that I will recount it here, though I cannot, unfortunately, remember where I read it. A journalist was speaking with an old woman who lived in poverty. The woman was going on, tearing Yeltsin apart, while speaking wistfully of the Soviet regime. When the journalist asked her whom she would support in the upcoming presidential election, she answered, ‘Yeltsin’. ‘But what about Zyuganov?’ ‘When Zyuganov’s president, we’ll vote for Zyuganov.’ There were a great many such old women; in fact everyone, including both Yeltsin’s active opponents and the democrat-intellectuals, was to one degree or another an old lady of this kind. The fear of a change in power, of a return to revolutionary chaos, proved stronger than dissatisfaction with the government. Yeltsin’s supporters’ avowals that power would not be handed to the Communists even if they won the election, which in some countries would have stirred mass indignation, worked in the president’s favour in Russia.”