Quotes by Justina Chen

About Justina Chen:

Justina Chen is a Taiwanese-American fiction writer. From 2007 to 2008, Justina toured across the US with Olympic Gold medalist Hannah Teter to promote her upcoming book, Girl Overboard, and the "Go Overboard" challenge grants co-sponsored by Youth Venture and Burton Snowboards. Her novel Nothing But the Truth (and a few white lies) won one of the 2007 Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature. North of Beautiful, her next book, got a Kirkus Book of the Year and a Barnes & Noble Book of the Year award and is widely considered her most famous work. Her latest book, Return to Me, is said to be based loosely on events that happened to her and her family, and has had a positive response from critics.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Silence, too, can be torture.

Justina Chen

I wondered about her chicken-and-egg relationship with Dad. Which came first? Her helplessness or his controlling?

Justina Chen

When the creative impulse sweeps over you, grab it. You grab it and honor it and use it, because momentum is a rare gift.

Justina Chen

If art made you think, then this was Art. Staring at the ball, made of layers and layers of cloth, I wondered about the glass marble at its heart. What if you wanted to reach that marble? Make sure it was still whole? You'd have to remove the layers....

Justina Chen

So, really," continued Jacob as if this were perfectly normal to expound on art in these circumstances, "when you think about it, the artists who make people stop and think, who push the form, who make you uncomfortable, who are laughable, well, they...

Justina Chen

This is beautiful," I said, ignoring the shop window to trace the gleaming stone walls fronting another boutique. "You know what's funny?" Jacob asked. He didn't wait for my answer. "You can see beauty in everything, except for yourself." *** I swall...

Justina Chen

What swells inside me is a love so boundless, I am the sunrise and sunset. I am Liberty Bell in the Cascades. I am Beihai Lake. I am every beautiful, truly beautiful, thing I've ever seen, captured in my personal Geographia, the atlas of myself.

Justina Chen

I preferred my brand of beauty where Norah was more beautiful than any bimbette, and Mom was beautiful whether sized extra-small or extra-large. Where Peony could look at herself in the mirror and murmur, wow, look at me. Just look at me.

Justina Chen

Flawed, we're truly interesting, truly memorable, and yes, truly beautiful.

Justina Chen

There must be a few times in life when you stand at a precipice of a decision. When you know there will forever be a Before and an After...I knew there would be no turning back if I designated this moment as my own Prime Meridian from which everythin...

Justina Chen

Adventure in life is good; consistency in coffee even better.

Justina Chen

Come on, don't you ever stop and smell the coffee?

Justina Chen

Wait!" What?" I lowered my cup hastily, wondering if maybe there was a stray hair, or worse, a newly boiled bug inside my cup. You got to smell it first. It's the proper way to cup coffee." Cup coffee?" Taste it." What? Are you the coffee police or s...

Justina Chen

My confidence was of the hothouse variety, carefully cultivated under highly regulated conditions. One wrong look, one mean comment, and my facade would wither.

Justina Chen

how many times had I begged Mom to divorce him already?

Justina Chen

To dream is to starve doubt, feed hope.

Justina Chen

Safe, I decided, didn't leave much room for fun.

Justina Chen

The pressure of his touch through my jacket and my sweater was more assurance than any promise ever made to me. It was a touch that said, I have your back and I am here for you. If a girl wasn't careful, she could fall in love with a touch like that.

Justina Chen

What would it be like to look in the mirror and actually accept what you see? Not loathe the reflection, or despise it, or be resigned to it? But to like it?

Justina Chen

Progress is hard on history.

Justina Chen

Author Bio

  • NameJustina Chen
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • Born1968
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionNovelist