Viet Thanh Nguyen Quotes
Top 88 wise famous quotes and sayings by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Thanh Nguyen Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Viet Thanh Nguyen on Wise Famous Quotes.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
They lived in this fashion for most of the year before the credit line of her patience finally reached its limit.
Unlike many, I was not intent on reproducing myself, deliberately or accidentally, since one of myself was more than enough for me to handle.
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.
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.
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.
Americans on the average do not trust intellectuals, but they are cowed by power and stunned by celebrity.
Every full bottle of alcohol has a message in it, a surprise that one will not discover until one drinks it
If God did not exist, then neither did divine punishment, but this meant nothing to ghosts who did not need God.
Revolutionaries are insomniacs, too afraid of history's nightmare to sleep, too troubled by the world's ills to be less than awake.
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.
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.
This was the problem with a walk down memory lane. It was almost always foggy, and one was likely to trip and fall.
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.
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.
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.
Telling what must not be told is one of the writer's primary tasks. It is also a difficult and dangerous one.
They were average specimens of national manhood, slim and gaunt with deeply tanned skin from riding in jeeps and on motorcycles.
Why do those who call for independence and freedom take away the independence and freedom of others?
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.
While I was critical of many things when it came to so-called Western civilization, cleavage was not one of them.
He tried to forget what he'd discovered, how little other lives mattered to him when his own was at stake.
Even if they found themselves in Heaven, our countrymen would find occasion to remark that it was not as warm as Hell. Why's
The point was simply this: the most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget.
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...
in America it was all or nothing when it came to race. You were either white or you weren't. Funnily