Thought-provoking quotes by Ken Liu that will leave you wiser
Ken Liu is a multiple award winning author. He was born in Lanzhou, China and grew up with his grandparents. He moved to the US when he was 11 and was educated there. He studied computer science, literature and law at Harvard at different times and worked with Microsoft and later as a corporate lawyer to eventually become a high-tech litigation consultant. He simultaneously started writing and a lot of his short stories were published in anthologies and many even won awards. Many of his short stories and novellas have been collected and published in anthologies and he's also writing a book series called the Dandelion Dynasty series. In fact, the first part of it was a Nebula Award finalist and it won the Locus Award for Best First Novel.
His mixes genre's as he writes, melding urban fantasy and magic realism with speculative fiction, science fiction in a wonderous style that will keep the reader transfixed. The reader always ends up learning something after one of his tales, be it about the past, the present of the future. Here are some spare words from his tales, which give but a small glimpse into the wisdom the story as a whole would hold:
On our self
“We are defined by the places we hold in the web of others’ lives.”
On talking
“Every act of communication is a miracle of translation.”
On self understanding
“We spend our entire lives trying to tell stories about ourselves—they’re the essence of memory. It is how we make living in this unfeeling, accidental universe tolerable.”
On justice
“There’s never going to be an end to suffering if ‘he deserves it’ is all the justification people need for inflicting pain.”
On some special friendships
“When there is such a large gap of years between two friends, we Chinese call it wang nien chih chiao, a friendship that forgets the years. It’s destiny that brings us together."
On true power
“A lord who knows how to wield men is ten times more fearsome than one who knows only how to wield a sword.”
On the unreliable beauty of memory
“A memory is a re-creation, precious because it is both more and less than the original.”
On the comfort of old friends
“Old friends are like old clothes: they fit the best.”
On the harsh flipside of perfection
“The more perfect the ideals, the less ideal the methods.”
On true strength
“A man who can kill several people with a sword is merely a living weapon. A great warrior can kill thousands of men with just his mind.”
On letting go
“You can’t tell how high a kite can fly without being willing to let all the string out.”
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