Quotes from Viet Thanh Nguyen

Let's see, he had told me one night at our hotel's bar, I've been beaten to death with brass knuckles by Robert Mitchum, knifed in the back by Ernest Borgnine, shot in the head by Frank Sinatra, strangled by James Coburn,

For example, grown men who sneer at the idea of unicorns will tearfully testify to the existence of an even rarer, more mythical species. Found only in remote ports of call and the darkest, deepest reaches of the most insalubrious taverns, this is the prostitute in whose chest beats the proverbial heart of gold. Let me assure you, if there is one part of a prostitute that is made of gold, it is not her heart.

Becoming a refugee is a gradual process, a bleaching ou, a transition into a ghostly existence.

No wonder, then, that I was drawn to the General, who, like my friends Man and Bon, never sneered about my muddled heritage. Upon selecting me for his staff, the General said, The only thing I'm interested in is how good you are at what you do, even if the things I ask you to do may not be so good. I

I cannot be the only one who believes that if others just saw who I really was, then I would be understood and, perhaps, loved. But what would happen if one took off the mask and the other saw one not with love but with horror, disgust, anger? What if the self that one exposes is as unpleasing to others as the mask, or even worse?

My parents did not grant me so much as an allowance. When I had asked for one in the fourth grade, my father had frowned and said, "Let me think it over." The next night he handed me an itemized list of expenses that included my birth, feeding, education, and clothing, the sum total being $24,376. "This doesn't include emotional aggravation, compound interest, or future expenses," my father said. "Now when can you start paying me an allowance?

So it was that we soaped ourselves in sadness and we rinsed ourselves with hope,

Sadistic military barbers intent on revealing the contours of their skulls for some nefarious phrenological purpose.

part spy thriller, part cultural and political reclamation, The Sympathizer

I had to stop periodically to savor not only my soup but the marrow of my memories.

even if staging a culture show was really an acknowledgement of one's cultural inferiority. The truly powerful rarely needed to put on a show, since their culture was always everywhere. Americans knew their culture was ubiquitous, whether burgers or bombs.

No more than two opinions or ideas on any one issue should be out there, the General said. Look at the voting system. Same concept. We had multiple parties and candidates and look at the mess we had. Here you choose the left hand or the right and that's more than enough. Two choices and look at all the drama with every presidential election. Even two choices may be one too many. One choice is enough, and no choice may be even better. Less

It wouldn't do to bring infectious ideas into a country unused to them.

slogans were empty suits draped on the corpse of an idea?

Don't you see that the Americans need the anti-American?

I was not a bastard, I was not, I was not, I was not, unless, somehow, I was.

But what does one say to a ghost, except to ask why he was here? I was afraid of the answer, so instead I said, 'What took you so long?

In the end, my father had it right. He called me nothing at all.

So I fell in love with Phi Phi, a harmless enough emotion. I was wont to fall in love two or three times a year and was now well past due.

The immigrant is the one who wants to come, unlike the refugee, who is forced to come.

While it is better to be loved than hated, it is also far better to be hated than ignored

But after the bottle was empty sometime that night, I was finally left with nothing but myself and my thoughts, devious cabdrivers that took me where I did not want to go. Now

Even if they found themselves in Heaven, our countrymen would find occasion to remark that it was not as warm as Hell. Why's

To understand our fate and theirs, we must do more than tell ghost stories. We must also tell the war stories that made ghosts and made us ghosts, the war stories that brought us here.