Nora Waln Quotes & Sayings

[In China at that time:] The penalty for adultery is death by strangulation. Mai-da's mother has added the following note to this section; 'Adultery is a feminine vice. Copulation on the man's part is not his wife's concern, unless he sires a child. Then she must accept the child as one of his homestead. — Nora Waln

Trees give peace to the souls of men. — Nora Waln

I was most confusedly in love ... Even though I resolved not to think of him, his face would keep appearing between me and a book I tried to read, or his voice would suddenly sound instead of the words I tried to write on a page ... I found love annoying and uncomfortable, like fetters, until I got used to it. — Nora Waln

Time in China has no immediacy as in America. Here I find the swift passage of our few earthly years accepted as naturally as the fall of flower and leaf ... I hear and speak a language in which grammar has no tense. Both scholars and illiterates, in ordinary daily speech, tell an event of centuries ago as casually as an incident of the hour. Only as my knowledge has accumulated have I been able to know whether something related happened just then or in some past dynasty. — Nora Waln

Glazed brick, white mortar, and blue roof-tiles do not make a house beautiful; carved rosewood, gold cloth, and clear green jade do not furnish a house with grace; a man of cultivated mind makes a house of mud and wattle beautiful; a woman, even with a pock-marked face; if refined of heart, fills a house with grace. -House of Exile — Nora Waln

Writing is something that I am ever driven to do, and concerning which I am never satisfied. — Nora Waln