The Sunset Emperor
Ijen Kim
Top 10 Best Quotes
“This was how we fought war. We drowned the battle sounds in the din of festive music and spent our time on song, dance and ritual.”
“They wanted me to forget that there had been other songs, hands and hearts.”
“They called me Master of Ten Thousand Years, but I was not master of anything, and certainly not of so many inconceivable years. I didn't want ten thousand years. I wanted to eat.”
“There was no need to fear new things. Shaking hands with a foreigner didn't make me foreign.”
“Then they did as with the birds, covered me too and shut me away in dark places.”
“The sun descended, sinking light, tinged with approaching end. I did not want to be the sunset emperor, the one to watch the day fade and falter, powerless to stop the night's advance.”
“The night lost its solidity. Sleep tugged me from its grip and tears misted its outline.”
“The foreign books meant much to me. I didn't always understand them, but I valued them regardless, even the simple words in English primers or the technical works beyond my grasp. They were my journeys and my window. I had no other way of looking beyond my small world.”
“The emperor was supposed to be the North Star, but if the sun never set, the North Star never got a chance to shine, and these grand councillors were all determined to make sure that Cixi's sun never set.”
“The darkness here was different, much louder for one thing, layered with voices and calls, people coming and going.”
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Book Keywords:
forgetting, war, bird, sunset, foreign-language, night, other-worlds, darkness, foreigners, power, emperor, china
