Viet Thanh Nguyen quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Viet Thanh Nguyen Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Viet Thanh Nguyen on Wise Famous Quotes.

...the only thing harder than knowing the right thing to do...is to actually do the right thing.

The hardest thing to do in talking to a woman was taking the first step, but the most important thing to do was not to think.

This particularly unfashionable neighborhood was a shady one despite the absence of trees, and

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

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

Even secret armies and political fronts needed clerks

happiness, American style, is a zero-sum game,

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.

By now the only part of me now seating were my eyeballs.

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

One did not depend on marines for good table manners. One depended on them to have the right instincts when it came to matters of life and death.

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

One must be grateful for one's education no matter how it arrives.

I could live without television, but not without books.

Always resent, never relent.

Some animals could see in the dark, but it was only humans who deliberately sought out every possible route into the darkness of our own interiors.

I always assume a man is at least a latent homosexual until proven otherwise

They lived in this fashion for most of the year before the credit line of her patience finally reached its limit.

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

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

They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented.

Unlike many, I was not intent on reproducing myself, deliberately or accidentally, since one of myself was more than enough for me to handle.

people who do not get the joke are dangerous people indeed

Marriage is slavery, I said. And when God made us human - if God exists - He didn't intend for us to be slaves to each other.

These questions required either Camus or cognac, and as Camus was not available I ordered cognac.

I believe our clever young man has intuited that while only the pursuit of happiness is promised to all Americans, unhappiness is guaranteed for many.

With that, the conversation finally exhausted itself, leaving us to nuzzle our cocktails with the affection one reserved for puppies.

Like all good students, I yearned for nothing but approval, even from fools.

In a country where possessions counted for everything, we had no belongings except our stories.

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.

This feat I also had no idea how to accomplish, but ignorance had never stopped me from taking action before.

Disarming an idealist was easy

Americans on the average do not trust intellectuals, but they are cowed by power and stunned by celebrity.

But to a bureaucrat paper was never just paper. Paper was life!

The unseen is almost always underlined with the unsaid.

Her routine was as predictable as the rotation of the earth.

I wanted to wrap her in my arms and brush my eyelashes against hers in butterfly kisses.

Every full bottle of alcohol has a message in it, a surprise that one will not discover until one drinks it

Besides my conscience, my liver was the most abused part of my body.

If God did not exist, then neither did divine punishment, but this meant nothing to ghosts who did not need God.

It is always better to admire the best among our foes rather than the worst among our friends

Revolutionaries are insomniacs, too afraid of history's nightmare to sleep, too troubled by the world's ills to be less than awake.

Music and singing keeps us alive, give us hope. If we can feel, we know we can live.

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.

no one asks poor people if they want war.

Wars never die, I said. They just go to sleep.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE WROTE THAT "if something is to stay in the memory it must be burned in: only that which never ceases to hurt stays in the memory.

Your problem isn't that you think too much; your problem is letting everyone know what you're thinking.

She cursed me at such length and with such inventiveness I had to check both my watch and my dictionary.

There is always something. That is confession's nature.

For her, he swallowed the black tea of exile.

This was the problem with a walk down memory lane. It was almost always foggy, and one was likely to trip and fall.

We would all be in Hell if convicted of our thoughts.

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

I was finally left with nothing but myself and my thoughts, devious cabdrivers that took me where I did not want to go.

blurring the lines between us and them can be a worthy behavior. After

Don't you see that Americans need the anti-American? While it is better to be loved than hated, it is also better to be hated than ignored.

Did we salivate for sadness, or had we only learned to enjoy what we were forced to eat?

The beer had the color and taste of baby's pee, but we followed our usual routine and drank with joyless discipline until we both passed out.

Every paranoid person is right at least once, said the tall sergeant. When he dies.

Telling what must not be told is one of the writer's primary tasks. It is also a difficult and dangerous one.

Quoting Nguyen Du - Talent and destiny are apt to feud.

(Nothing, the General muttered, is ever so expensive as what is offered for free.) At

I had won the argument, but somehow, as in our college days, he had won the audience.

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

Easier to get a gun here than to vote or drive. You

All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.

Why do those who call for independence and freedom take away the independence and freedom of others?

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

Whatever may be noble and heroic in war is found in us, and whatever is evil and horrific in war is also found in us.

give a woman the chance to reject something else besides me

While I was critical of many things when it came to so-called Western civilization, cleavage was not one of them.

I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps

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

The problem is that those who insist on their innocence believe anything they do is just.

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

A slogan is just an empty suit, she said. Anyone can wear it. I

A person's strength was always his weakness, and vice versa.

The point was simply this: the most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget.

When your grandchildren ask you what you did during the war, you can say, I made this movie.

Let's just hope history forgets the snafus.

By now the only part of me not sweating were my eyeballs... An X-ray of my skull would have shown a hamster running furiously in an exercise wheel...

Always a shy one, he swallowed his pill of Catholicism seriously.

in America it was all or nothing when it came to race. You were either white or you weren't. Funnily

Nothing is ever so expensive as what is offered for free.

breathtakingly lewd exhibition of modesty.

Death would hurt only for a moment, which was not so bad when one considered how much, and for how long, life hurt.

That is what revolutionaries do. We sacrifice ourselves to save others.