I judge little-known (at least, known little by me, for who knows they're like huuuge somewhere, some time) books by their first lines.Well, that's my way of convincing myself to buy it (you know, when Oprah isn't there. hah! I kid, i kid.), especially if I didn't have the money to buy, or had prior budgetary allocations for said amount, like say, a month's worth of Jasmine rice. Well, it happened that I was totally hankering for anything intellectually-stimulating other than White Dragons and Where's Fluffy and Strawberry Fields, and mostly after intoxicating weeeeks and weeeeks of cheap tweets and Wes Anderson flicks.
Okay, so, whatever. I just had to buy a book. And there's something witty and pretentious about using '20 Fragments of A Ravenous Youth" as a title, and from a actual mainland-er Chinese, too.
It turned out quite a good read. I didn't expect much (for sure, The Catcher in the Rye, this is not) and it didn't disappoint either. There were some cool moments, there, too, some I've listed below. I'm definitely going to re-visit China. Someday. Some day.
"Be young or die. That was my plan."
"I felt safer once I got there. Humans need cages around their bodies - wombs, houses, coffins."
"From inside the building came the sound of police dogs barking. I turned my back on that place of Morality and Power and Guidance."
"Huizi once told me that, when a young person started drinking, it was a sign that they were getting old. It suddenly felt very true."
"People always say it's harder to heal a wounded heart than a wounded body. Bullshit. It's exactly the opposite - a wounded body takes much longer to heal. A wounded heart is nothing but ashes of memories. But the body is everything. The body is blood and veins and cells and nerves. A wounded body is when, after leaving a man you've lived with for three years, you curl up on your side of the bed as if there's still somebody beside you. That is a wounded body: a body that feels connected to someone who is no longer there."
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