Joan He > Quotes

“What is truth? Scholars seek it. Poets write it. Good Kings pay gold to hear it. But in trying times, truth is the first thing we betray.”
― Joan He, Descendant of the Crane

“Logic ended where love began.”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“If you want to understand a person, peer at his heart through the window of his prejudices and assumptions.”
― Joan He, Descendant of the Crane

“Equality is not the natural way of the world, whispered her father's voice. It must be nurtured.”
― Joan He, Descendant of the Crane

“None of us live without consequence. Our personal preferences are not truly personal. One person’s needs will deny another’s. Our privileges can harm ourselves and others.”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“Because it was possible to love someone without fully understanding them. Possible to love parts of them, and not their whole.”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“The problem with oceans? They always seem smaller from the shore.”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“Missing some people was like missing air. You did yourself no favors by wondering how you survived without them.”
― Joan He, Descendant of the Crane

“People wanted the quickest, easiest solutions. To solve their most immediate problems, they could steal from any future other than their own.”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“Alone is an island. It’s an uncrossable sea, being too far from another soul, whereas lonely is being too close, in the same house yet separated by walls because we choose to be, and when I fall asleep, the pain of loneliness follows me as I dream of more walls.”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“And I think we have even less choice over the ones we’re meant to find.”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“No one enters this world by choice. If we're lucky, we can choose how we leave.”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“You can't possibly touch all the lives in this world. But if you can lift someone with your two hands, that is enough.”
― Joan He, Descendant of the Crane

“Celia had loved the sea. Loved the whitecaps that foamed like milk, the waltz of sunlight atop the peaks. Kasey did not. The sea was a trillion strands of hair, infinitely tangled on the surface and infinitely dense beneath. It distorted time: Minutes passed like hours and hours passed like minutes out there. It distorted space, made the horizon seem within reach.

And it was the perfect place for hiding secrets.”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“No night was perfect for treason, but this one came close.”
― Joan He, Descendant of the Crane

“Everyone lived at the expense of someone else.”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“Would people ever willingly give up their freedom for the good of others?”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“I love you.
And even if you failed me,
I'd never replace you”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“This fate had chosen her. It was only now, seventeen years later, that she chose it back.”
― Joan He, Descendant of the Crane

“The dominos had been set centuries ago. One quake, and they all fell.”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“Anger is a form of confidence - a hope that the ones we admire will change for the better.”
― Joan He, Descendant of the Crane

“To learn, her mind had needed to unlearn.”
― Joan He, Descendant of the Crane

“The ocean does not come poisoned. People poison it.”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“Others might believe there’s power in a single step,” murmured Actinium, the cadence of his breath brushing Kasey’s ear. Her eyes widened. His warmth was real. So was the brace of his arm. The press of his chest. “But most choices are made before you reach the edge.”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“Her, against a seasoned court. Her, against the tides of war. Her, against the king's assassin.”
― Joan He, Descendant of the Crane

“The only place Kasey still found Celia was in her dreams.”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“When I dream of her, it’s in vibrant color, unlike the gradients of gray of my monochrome days. But everything is hazy when I wake. The details merge. The colors fade.”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“Even in a sea, every life rippled far beyond its end.”
― Joan He, The Ones We're Meant to Find

“ Knowledge is truth, Little Bird. Those who refuse to learn live in a world of falsity.”
― Joan He, Descendant of the Crane

“But tonight, Hesina let herself miss her father. She missed him. She missed him a lot. As the distant chords flowed into their little clearing, winding with the strings of her heart, she imagined herself riding on a chariot to face the Kendi'an Crown Prince. And later, when she slept, she dreamed she died, but her father read her back to life, and together they flew to the lunar palace on the backs of their giant cranes.”
― Joan He, Descendant of the Crane