Dream of the Walled City - Lisa Huang Fleischman

• Lying in my bed in the dark listening to them, I wondered that my father should have been so beloved that the lowest stable hand should spill tears for him. But I was a child then, and I did not understand that with every death, many different things are mourned at once.
• At the moment of parting, you can hardly beleive that your paths have diverged for ever. It is only in retrospect, when you look down the length of the years that have passed, that you realize that your last glimpse of someone's face had you but known it at the time, was indeed final.
• But there were some who nevertheless found in our books fuel for their wit, and some who found whetstones to sharpen the fighthing swords in their souls, and some who found the shivery exultation of a bird flying before the storm.
• These dreamy, romantic girls were always the most ferocious, insisting as they did that theor lives match their fantasies.
• For a brief moment, I felt a pang of regret about Zhao. I understood Guai. Zhao understood me. But these qualities were destined to be found in seperate men.
• You hope and hope, and everything is bearable as long as you hope. Then you come to the end of hoping, and it feels like a death.