Language Quote by Monique Truong

“I had forgotten how different my language looks on paper, that its letters have so little resemblance to how they actually sound. Words, most I had not spoken for years, generously gave themselves to me. Fluency, after all, is relative. On that sheet of paper, on another side of the globe, I am…” quote by Monique Truong — Download Open image

““I had forgotten how different my language looks on paper, that its letters have so little resemblance to how they actually sound. Words, most I had not spoken for years, generously gave themselves to me. Fluency, after all, is relative. On that sheet of paper, on another side of the globe, I am fluent.””

Monique Truong

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“Anh Minh believed that if he could save three minutes here, five minutes there, then one day he could tally them all up and…

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“But that, I am afraid, was my mistake from the very beginning, the fatal flaw in my design. I thought that I could suffocate the Old Man with shovelfuls of dirt and mud. But with his body in the soil, in the specific silt of this family's land, everything on it was bound to die. Rancor seeped from his eyelids,…

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“When they are like this, I remember what the man on the bridge had told me: "The French are all right in France." What…

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“I know you are in your best áo dài. You bought it when you were just eighteen. Gray is not a color for a young woman. Gray is the color you wanted because you were practical even then, knew that gray is a color you would grow into, still wear when your hair turned white. You snap yourself into this…

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“The irony of acquiring a foreign tongue is that I have amassed just enough cheap, serviceable words to fuel my desires and never, never enough lavish, imprudent ones to feed them. It is true, though, that there are some French words that I have picked up quickly, in fact, words that I cannot remember not knowing. As if I had…

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“Language is a house with a host of doors, and I am too often uninvited and without the keys.”

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“I am forced to admit that I am, to them, nothing but a series of destinations with no meaningful expanses in between. ”

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“She laughed that sharp, quick laugh that smart girls all had, until they found out that the sound of brilliance flashing made boys nervous.…

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“After a week's worth of failed fairy tales—stories that made my eyelids flutter open and not shut—my father tried telling me stories that belonged only to him. Thomas told me of an island off the coast of a different world. On this island, there stood a city whose buildings were made of glass. He told me that at the heart…

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Alcohol, I had learned, was an eloquent if somewhat inaccurate interpreter. I had placed my trust that December night in glass after glass of…

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“Obey,' like 'worship,' is a strong word. Her mother and father had told her so, and she believed them. They gave her life, they told her, so that she could give them grandsons. She had been prepared to perform that task from the very beginning. When her body took the first step, her mother found for her a husband. A…

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“There is no forgiveness in ancestor worship, only retribution and eternal debt.”

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Explore all 41 Monique Truong quotes

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I am attracted to looking at the different things language can mean even in one sometimes quite ordinary utterance. Writing is partly about listening closely to yourself as you think or compose and being aware of the different tensions and weights among the words, the different directions any one of them could lead. I like to play with the multiplicity…

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