Don Lee Quotes

At what point is it acceptable to give up?

Perhaps what he feared most was happening–his imagination had abandoned him, the well had gone dry.

We can't sit around waiting for things to happen. We've got to make them happen. Nothing's going to fall in our laps. That only happens to beautiful white people.

And, of course, it might simply be that everyone's become a little bored with one another, doing the same things over and over, hearing and telling the same stories.

It was such a dismal time in Japan. It almost seemed as if they were dying as a people, their economy in tatters, the population dwindling, the remaining citizens isolated and adrift. Had they been wrong about everything? Kenzo wondered. The power of consensus and obligation, the imperatives of racial purity and harmony?

I'll never fall in love, because I could never trust that I wouldn't be abandoned.

From personal experience, Kenzo knew about the state of racial equality in America. It was sound in theory, but not in practice. It was a glorious dream, but just a dream. It would never work. It had never worked
not anywhere, not anytime in history
and the US was the only country foolish and hypocritical enough to try.

How can you explain that it's just that he was sad, that he'd been sad all his life, and he knew he'd always be sad?

There was something exquisite and poetic about those fucking catastrophes.

It's not that people change. People don't change. They merely hide things from you, and lie.

You're not going to be able to save her, you know. If you keep trying, she'll break your heart.

The simple exchange of legal tender for goods and services
was there anything more elemental, yet more beautiful? Money. No matter what anyone said, it was the answer to everything. When it came down to it, there was no human interaction that wasn't, at its core, a transaction.

Youth is about promise.

How well do we really know anyone? We only know what people are willing to reveal.