Viet Thanh Nguyen

“Perhaps forgiveness is overrated,”

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

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

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“Innocence and guilt. These are cosmic issues. We’re all innocent on one level and guilty on another. Isn’t that what Original Sin…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“He had a Minnesotan’s admiration for resourcefulness in the face of hardship, bred by generations of people one very bad winter away…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“After all, nothing was more American than wielding a gun and committing oneself to die for freedom and independence, unless it was…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“She wondered what, if anything, she knew about love. Not much, perhaps, but enough to know that what she would do for…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“We don't succeed or fail because of fortune or luck. We succeed because we understand the way the world works and what…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“When was the last time an American president found it worth his while to write a speech on the importance of art…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“then, to present myself as just another immigrant, glad to be in the land where the pursuit of happiness was guaranteed in…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“He was more embarrassed and discreet about sex than about things I thought more difficult, like killing people, which pretty much defined…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

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

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“Too much freedom of the press is unhealthy for a democracy, I declared.”

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“You aren’t afraid of the things you believe in,” he”

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“would fall in love with the young, handsome,”

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

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

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“A nineteenth-century Russian novel and vodka accompanied each other perfectly.”

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

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

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“No, we fought to the tunes of love songs, for we were the Italians of Asia.”

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“it. I was venturing into a wilderness many had explored before me, crossing the threshold separating those who had killed from those…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“I cannot be the only one who believes that if others just saw who I really was, then I would be understood…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“Are you going to be the kind of person who always pays the asking price?” my mother demanded. “Or the kind who…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

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

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

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

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“I liked my scotch undiluted, like I liked my truth. Unfortunately, undiluted truth was as affordable as eighteen-year-old single malt scotch.”

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“a talent is something you use, not something that uses you. The talent you cannot not use, the talent that possesses you—that…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“Time howled in my ear, screaming with laughter at the idea that we could control it with wristwatches, alarm clocks, revolutions, history.”

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“He responded with one of those looks of pity and amusement I was by now so used to getting, the kind that…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“We instinctively knew that in order for Americans to find refugees like us acceptable, they first had to find our food digestible…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“Before I only wanted to change the world. I still want that, but it was ironic how I never wanted to change…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“My American adolescence was filled with tales of woe like this, all of them proof of what my mother said, that we…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“Our proper mode in situations where demand was high and supply was low was to elbow, jostle, crowd, and hustle, and, if…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“Although he could have shot me or turned us back, he did what I gambled every honorable man forced to take a…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“What was it like to live in a time when one’s fate was not war, when one was not led by the…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“Now a guarantee of happiness—that’s a great deal. But a guarantee to be allowed to pursue the jackpot of happiness? Merely an…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“I pitied the French for their naivete in believing that they had to visit a country in order to exploit it. Hollywood…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“I came to understand that in the United States, land of the fabled American dream, it is un-American to be a refugee.…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“All sorts of situations exist where one tells lies in order to reach an acceptable truth, and our conversation continued thus until…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“America’s great promise! The promise of the immigrant! The promise of the American Dream! The promise that the people of this country…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“My parents did not grant me so much as an allowance. When I had asked for one in the fourth grade, my…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen

“IN WRITING THIS BOOK, I returned again and again to what people call my homeland, where my parents were born, as was…

— Viet Thanh Nguyen