Pearl S. Buck

Who was Pearl S. Buck?

Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu, was an American writer and novelist. As the daughter of missionaries, Buck spent most of her life before 1934 in China. Her novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the U.S. in 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces."

After her return to the United States in 1935, she continued her prolific writing career, and became a prominent advocate of the rights of women and minority groups, and wrote widely on Asian cultures, becoming particularly well known for her efforts on behalf of Asian and mixed race adoption.

Famous Quotes:

• I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to earth.
• Men would rather be starving and free than fed in bonds.
• Love alone could waken love.
• Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.
• If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.
• The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband's bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only a uniform, that his power is but a gun in the hands of a fool.
• Man was lost if he went to a usurer, for the interest ran faster than a tiger upon him.
• The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible -- and achieve it, generation after generation.
• Praise out of season, or tactlessly bestowed, can freeze the heart as much as blame.
• I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.