“Change doesn't just happen,” her mother had always said, echoing the Shaker motto. “It has to be planned.” — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
My parents did give me a lot of books - biographies of Marie Curie - and I did read them, because I… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
My mother is deeply pragmatic by nature. Perhaps you had to be, as an immigrant. You made do. — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“It came, over and over, down to this: What made someone a mother? Was it biology alone, or was it love?” — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“Parents, she thought, learned to survive touching their children less and less.” — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“Was she sad? She was angry. Furious at the smallness of her mother's life.” — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
My mother ended up getting a Ph.D. of her own, in chemistry, and eventually became a tenured professor. — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
My mother wrote a teen column for the South China Morning Post in the 1950s when she was growing up in Hong… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“At last she turned to the only source she could think of: her mother. Her mother was a journalist, at least in… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
Now that I have a child of my own, I'm in awe of - and deeply grateful for - the time my… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
When my father finished his Ph.D., my mother went back for another bachelor's degree, this time in environmental science. — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
My parents used books as bribes: if I got straight A's on my report card, they would buy me one book. This… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“She smelled of home...as if home had never been a place, but had always been this little person whom she'd carried alongside… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“In Pauline and Mal’s house, nothing was simple. In her parents’ house, things had been good or bad, right or wrong, useful… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“How had it begun? Like everything: with mothers and fathers. Because of Lydia's mother and father, because of her mother's and father's… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“To a parent, your child wasn't just a person: your child was a *place*, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
My parents came to America in the late 1960s because my father studied for a Ph.D. in Indiana. My mother joined him… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“To a parent, your child wasn’t just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“Parents, she thought, learned to survive touching their children less and less. As a baby Pearl had clung to her; she’d worn… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“I'll tell you a secret. A lot of times, parents are not the best at seeing their children clearly.” — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“Because more than anything, her mother had wanted to stand out; because more than anything, her father had wanted to blend in.… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
It's incredibly rewarding to have people come up to me at readings and say, 'I'm not Chinese, but this is the relationship… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“To a parent, your child wasn’t just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“To a parent, your child wasn't just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
When you mention to people growing up in Cleveland they bring up the river catching on fire, or LeBron James leaving, they have these… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
It's so easy, as a writer, to get stuck in your own head, to live in the little worlds you create. To forget that… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“All up and down the street the houses looked like any others—but inside them were people who might be happy, or taking refuge, or… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
No reader wants to sit through the same scene four times in a row, unless they're radically different. — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
Debut novels are difficult because nobody knows you... they just don't find a huge audience, because that's how the market works. — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
We have to figure out why we see the world in different ways and then how are we going to adjust so that we… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“I have measured my life with coffee spoons and do I dare to eat a peach?' 'DO I DARE DISTURB THE UNIVERSE?” — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“No one, she had learned from experience, could stand such silence for long. If you waited long enough, someone would start talking, and more… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“Most of the time, everyone deserves more than one chance. We all do things we regret now and then. You just have to carry… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“Though she would never quite articulate it this way, resentment began to sheathe concern. ANGER IS FEAR'S BODYGUARD, a poster in the hospital hard… — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
Spend too much time alone with your own words, and your writing grows anemic, in dire need of a transfusion. — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
“Everyone sees race, Lex," said Moody. "The only difference is who pretends not to.” — Celeste Ng Copy Share Image
