Shan Sa quotes:

I talk to trees and animals. We have interesting conversations about food, weather, and love. They sometimes can predict the future.

Endless moons, an opaque universe, thunder, tornadoes, the quaking earth. Rare moments of peace; forehead up against my knees, arms around my head, I though, I listened, I longed not to exist. but life was there, a transparent pearl, a star revolving slowly on its own axis.

I would like to be a philosopher in ancient Athens and a poet in ancient China.

I envied these women I saw before me, their beauty still intact. Life has its revenge of life. Untimely death is the secret of eternal youth.

Dying is so simple. A fleeting moment of suffering. In the blink of an eye you are over the threshold, into another world. No more pain, no more fears. You sleep so well there. Dying is like rubbing snow together, setting fire to a whole winter of cold and ice.

Happiness is something you lay siege to, it is a battle like a game of go. I will take hold of all the pain and snuff it out.

Heroes are damned. No mortal conquers Death.

I notice the silvery hair at his temples with a tinge of sadness. Why do parents grow old? Life is a castle of lies slowly dismantled by the passage of time. I regret not spending more time looking at the people I love.

Politicians are better liars than writers.

Years have passed and how I am anxiously watching the twilight of my childhood, quietly sinking, never to rise again.

Out on the street I start to run; I need to breathe in this life, the trees, the warmth of my town. I will be able to control my own fate and I will know how to be happy. Happiness is something you lay siege to, it is a battle . . .

I have been brought up in a world dominated by honor. I have known neither crime, poverty, nor betrayal, and here I taste hatred for the first time: it is sublime, like a thirst for justice and revenge.-the girl who played go

I succeeded in using my charms like a weapon; I learned to play with other's hearts and to master my own desires."

She died a few days later, and her death buried once and for all the intrigues between the Precious Wife, the Gracious Wife, and all the Imperial favorites. Rivalries and alliances, loathing and attraction had been dissolved. Their existence had been a pointless tragedy, just as the talent of one prodigious poetess had been.

I am like them-I want life. I want to go back to Manchuria, to find my house and my go table. I will return to the Square of a Thousand Winds and wait for my Stranger. I know he will come ... one afternoon ... as he did that first time.

To other women the choice of clothes was a form of ingenious exhibition, a shameless seduction. To me, dresses were like a breastplate that I put on to set off to war against this life.

I have written too much about lives - I feel I have lived for too long.

I splash my head with ice-cold water and turn to face the mirror. When my image appears I instinctively look away. Is there a truth on the other side that we do not want to see?

I succeeded in using my charms like a weapon; I learned to play with other's hearts and to master my own desires.

In the closed world of the gynaeceum, despite the gardens and parkland extending beyong the horizon, despite the insurmountable walls separating pavillions and palaces, the tangled web of our fate was inescapable. Why did these women love each other to the point of madness? Why did they loathe one another so vehemently, and why did sworn enemies feel such horror and fascination for one another? Why should furious hate become obsession, then intoxication and the very reason to live?Because love and hate were the two heads of the demon.

The moon in all her immaculate purity hung in the sky, laughing at this world of dust. She congratulated me for my carefully considered maneuvers and invited me to share in her eternal solitude.

Tomorrow we will be nothing but earth and dust. Who will remember the love a soldier once knew?

would you dare to love me?