Quotes from Viet Thanh Nguyen

One could choose between innocence and experience, but one could not have both. At

Stories are just things we fabricate, nothing more. We search for them in a world beside our own, then leave them here to be found, garments shed by ghosts.

Politics is always personal, my dear, she said. That's what makes it deadly.

We lie in wait for the right moment and the just cause, which, at this moment, is simply wanting to live.

Remember, you're not half of anything, you're twice of everything

My task was to ensure that the people scuttling in the background of the film would be real Vietnamese things and dressed in real Vietnamese clothing, right before they died.

I will always be on the side of those who have nothing and who are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace,

Vodka was one of the three things the Soviet Union made that were suitable for export, not counting political exiles; the other two were weapons and novels.

The typical American preferred the canned version of philosophy found in how-to manuals, but even average Frenchmen and Vietnamese cherished a love of knowledge.

Contrary to some perceptions, revolutionary ideology, even in a tropical country, is not hot. It is cold, man-made.

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

They were average specimens of national manhood, slim and gaunt with deeply tanned skin from riding in jeeps and on motorcycles.

cheered by the optimism that one sometimes had at the beginning of strenuous exercise, a kind of helium that filled our lungs and carried us along

I am a bad refugee because I insist on seeing the historical reasons that create refugees and the historical reasons for denying refugee status to certain populations.

If youth was not wasted, how could it be youth? Perhaps

Ignorance is beneficial when we are aware of it.

Even secret armies and political fronts needed clerks

Hollywood did not just make horror movie monsters, it was its own horror movie monster, smashing me under its foot.

Disarming an idealist was easy. One only needed to ask why the idealist was not on the front line of the particular battle he had chosen. The

As Hegel said, tragedy was not the conflict between right and wrong but right and right, a dilemma none of us who wanted to participate in history could escape. The major had the right to live, but I was right

The more logical conclusion was that the General had bolstered the Vietnamese tendency for conspiracy with the American trait of paranoia, admittedly with my help.

Drenched in café au lait stucco, the mall was bordered by an example of America's most unique architectural contribution to the world, a parking lot

As the Congressman rose, I calmed the tremor in my gut. I was in close quarters with some representative specimens of the most dangerous creature in the history of the world, the white man in a suit.

I had been resigned to the consolation of man's best friend, i.e., self-pleasure, and certainly did not possess the wherewithal to consort with prostitutes.