Excitement is tinged with a hint of sorrow, like the first stroke of the paintbrush on a fresh sheet of paper. - P347
Then he proceeds to make a series of shadow puppets with his hands held against the reading light. He teaches the boy how to make a butterfly, a puppy, a bat, a sinuous dragon. - P348
"Shadows are given life by light, and they also die by light." - P348
Can the girl stolen from her family steal family away from another child? Is this the moral pronouncement of a hypocrite? - P348
The grains of sand swirling in the water resolve into individual faces, laughing, crying, yearning, dreaming. - P351
The man sits in the lotus position, eyes closed, a beatific smile on his face like a statue of the Buddha. - P352
I crouch and leap like a bounding tiger, like a soaring wild ape, like a hawk taking flight. I smash through the window of the room in the inn and dive into the ocean that is night. - P353
"You may think width, depth, and height are the only dimensions of the world, Hidden Girl, but you’d be wrong. You have lived your life as an ant on a sheet of paper, and the truth is far more wondrous." - P355
It is as if the governor’s skin has been pulled away to reveal everything underneath: I see his beating heart, his pulsating intestines, the blood streaming through his transparent vessels, his gleaming white bones as well as the velvety marrow stuffed inside like jujube-stained lotus paste. - P355
This is the perspective of the Buddha, who comprehends the incomprehensibility of Indra’s net, which connects the smallest mote at the tip of a flea’s foot to the grandest river of innumerable stars that spans the sky at night. - P355
but I am the Hidden Girl, and my loyalty is to the tranquility yearned by all. - P361
I am a thief after all. I’ve stolen my life for myself, and I will steal back the lives of others. - P361
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