Quotes from Viet Thanh Nguyen

Americans of all kinds believe that it is impossible for an American to become a refugee, although it is possible for refugees to become Americans and in that way be elevated one step closer to heaven.

The vodka, when served, was as pungent and wonderful as I had imagined it would be, the paint thinner I needed to strip down the stained, flaking walls of my interior.

We were the unwanted, the unneeded, and the unseen, invisible to all but ourselves. And you are so happy you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Hypnotized by my squid's call and my erection's response, I inserted the latter into the former, which was, unfortunately, a perfect fit. Unfortunate because from then onward no squid was safe from me, not to say that this diluted form of bestiality—after all, hapless squid, you were dead, though I now see how that raises other moral questions—not to say this transgression occurred often, since squid was a rare treat in our landlocked town.

while only the pursuit of happiness is promised to all Americans, unhappiness is guaranteed for many.

Some will undoubtedly find this episode obscene. Not I! Massacre is obscene. Torture is obscene. Three million dead is obscene. Masturbation, even with an admittedly nonconsensual squid? Not so much. I, for one, am a person who believes that the world would be a better place if the word "murder" made us mumble as much as the word "masturbation.

If one ever sees something written in red, one knows trouble and change lie ahead.

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

IAM A SPY, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds. I am not some misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, although some have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides.

I'm dying because this world I'm living in isn't worth dying for! if something is worth dying for, then you've got a reason to live.

But I was also one of those unfortunate cases who could not help but wonder whether my need for American charity was due to my having first been the recipient of American aid," or so I wrote in my novel The Sympathizer. I am a bad refugee, you see, who can't help but see that my good fortune is a stroke of bureaucratic luck and the racial politics of the United States, where Asians are considered model minorities.

Yes, I am flawed, we are all flawed, even you, but I blame my flaws on the fact that all my life I only ever aspired to one thing—to be human. That was my first mistake, since I was already human, a fact not always recognized by others.

While the clerks chatted in a language I could not understand, I hesitated, yearning to take everything home but unable to choose.

My brother went to Harvard seven years after arriving in the States with no English. I won the Pulitzer Prize. We could be put on a poster touting how refugees make America great. And we do. But it shouldn't take this kind of success to be welcomed. Even if refugees, undocumented immigrants, and legal immigrants are not all potential billionaires, that is no reason to exclude them.

Thus, when the permed chanteuse whose chair I occupied returned, it was with confidence that I stood up and said to Lana, Let's go to the bar. Principle five: statements, not questions, were less likely to lead to no. She shrugged and offered me her hand.

He tried to forget what he'd discovered, how little other lives mattered to him when his own was at stake.

Cut to villagers speaking in their own language? Do you think it might not be decent to let them actually say something instead of simply acknowledging that there is some kind of sound coming from their mouths? Could you not even just have them speak a heavily accented English—you know what I mean, ching-chong English—just to pretend they are speaking in an Asian language that somehow American audiences can strangely understand?

You just got caught by surprise. Sooner or later you'll figure out love's just a reflex action some of us have.

When it came to learning the worst habits of our French masters and their American replacements, we quickly proved ourselves the best. We, too, could abuse grand ideals! Having liberated ourselves in the name of independence and freedom—I was so tired of saying these words!—we then deprived our defeated brethren of the same.

This, Arthur realized, was the difference between them. Arthur thought of what he had done, what he was doing, or what he should have done, but Louis thought only of what he would do.

They send him away and no one ever sees him again. That's what happens to writers who put their names on things.

These invaders came to conquer our land and now would never go home.

And there you have the absurdity.

The Communists are evil. They don't believe in God and they don't believe in money.