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Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
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"Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" Quotes

Two boys in China discover a forbidden treasure trove of Western literature, forever transforming their lives and relationship with a local seamstress.

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Quotes

The venerated teacher rediscovers the King of Stories in the Magic Flute. Sleeping Beauty and Snow White emerge amid brilliant bursts of laughter. What fairy tales! What enchanting stories! The old man serves them up one after another, as ethereal and elegant as a prince.

Dai Sijie

The girl smiled at us, neither frightened nor surprised. She smiled as if we were two human beings.

Dai Sijie

Sometimes in life we need to dream. The impossible dreams. Because sometimes we achieve the impossible.

Dai Sijie

But who needs education when you've got the outside world?

Dai Sijie

As far as I was concerned, Foggle [the dog] was a cooking pot on four legs.

Dai Sijie

Beauty has its place in life. Even in a re-education camp people had to thaw out. And many men thawed out to the sight of the Little Seamstress.

Dai Sijie

I found fresh chunks of the authorial tragicomedy lying on every reading-room table.

Dai Sijie

You know, when you burn a book, the ideas in it evaporate like the water in this tea kettle. But that is the point of this book, I have no interest in those ideas.

Dai Sijie

People can dominate each other without having anything to say.

Dai Sijie

At that moment, I had a feeling of complete kinship with the people in that small village by the shores of the East Sea. It was moving to think that we were all in the same place at the same time.

Dai Sijie