Lisa See
Lisa See
Lisa See is an American writer and novelist. Her paternal great-grandfather was Chinese, which has had a great impact on her life and work. Her books include On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family, a detailed account of See's family history, and the novels Flower Net, The Interior, Dragon Bones, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Peony in Loveand Shanghai Girls, which made it to the 2010 New York Times bestseller list. Both Shanghai Girls and Snow...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth18 February 1955
CountryUnited States of America
Don't ever feel that you have to hide who you are. Nothing good ever comes from keeping secrets like that.
Mama used to tell us a story about a cicada sitting high in a tree. It chirps and drinks in dew, oblivious to the praying mantis behind it. The mantis arches up its front leg to stab the cicada, but it doesn't know an oriole perches behind it. The bird stretches out its neck to snap up the mantis for a midday meal, but its unaware of the boy who's come into the garden with a net. Three creatures—the cicada, the mantis and the oriole—all coveted gains without being aware of the greater and inescapable danger that was coming.
I don't really know anything about the movie business, even though I've lived in Los Angeles my whole life - somehow I've never bumped into it.
My love for him had never gone away but only changed, growing deeper like wine fermenting or pickles curing. It bore into me with the pervasiveness of water working its way to the center of a mountain.
i would rather be married to broken jade than flawless clay
Gone were my girlish ideas about romantic love and my later ideas about sexual love. From Yi, I learned to appreciate deep-heart love. Peony in Love
The greatest calling of all is to have a literary life.
Seeing something once is better than hearing about it a hundred times. Doing something once is better than seeing it a hundred times.
a laotong relationship is made by choice...when we first looked in each other's eyes in the palanquin I felt something special pass between us--like a spark to start a fire or a seed to grow rice. But a single spark is not enough to warm a room nor is a single seed enough to grow a fruitful crop. Deep love--true-heart love--must grow.
All these types of love come out of duty, respect, and gratitude. Most of them, as the women in my county know, are sources of sadness, rupture, and brutality.
In that moment I understood that the cruelest words in the universe are if only.
Poetry is on earth to make you serene, not corrupt your mind, thoughts,or emotions
What stays with me most is a general sense of loss, unease, and longing for the past that cannot be relieved.
A book is one kind of an art form and a film is a different art form. I think as a writer you just have to say, well the book is one thing, and the film is a completely different one.