Jung Chang Quotes

27 quotes in 472 categories

• Although my book is banned I am still allowed to go to China and travel. There is no longer the kind of control that Mao…
• For anyone to open their heart, they need the right atmosphere, and something to prompt them. For my mother it was her trip abroad: she…
• When a man gets power, even his chickens and dogs rise to heaven.
• At the age of fifteen my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord general.
• If children were brought up to become non-conformists it would only ruin their lives. So parents all over China who loved their children told them…
• I no longer have the terrible nightmares that I used to have. Mao had just died in 1976, and China began to open up. For…
• When I was in China, Mao was Chairman, and parents were terrified to tell their children anything that differed from the party line in case…
• While I was writing Wild Swans I thought the famine was the result of economic mismanagement but during the research I realised that it was…
• I remember when my mother pointed to a stone, and she said this was the kind of stone people used to place on the feet…
• I think because of their terrible past, particularly this century, the Chinese have come to accept cruelty more than many other people, which is something…
• The Chinese seemed to be mourning Mao in a heartfelt fashion. But I wondered how many of their tears were genuine. People had practiced acting…
• I was not allowed to take notes but my friend and I memorised those two and a half pages. Most people talked to me because…
• China is more prosperous than before. The people have better lives but they are not happy and confident because the scars are still there.
• I like to have Chinese furniture in my home as a constant and painful reminder of how much has been destroyed in China. The contrast…
• I feel perhaps my heart is still in China.
• I would love mainland Chinese to read my book. There is a Chinese translation which I worked on myself, published in Hong Kong and Taiwan.…
• What has marked Chinese society is its level of cruelty, not just revolutions and wars. We ought to reject it totally, otherwise in another upheaval…
• When he asked my grandmother if she would mind being poor, she said she would be happy just to have her daughter and himself: 'If…
• ...boredom was as exhausting as backbreaking labor.
• If you have love, even plain cold water is sweet.

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