6 Quotes by Kim Thúy

If a mark of affection can sometimes be taken for an insult, perhaps the gesture of love is not universal: it too must be translated from one language to another, must be learned.

He leaned against me, holding my arms, but didn't get up. He was crying. He kept crying and crying, then stopped suddenly, and turned my face towards the sky. He asked me what colour I saw. Blue. Then he raised his thumb and pointed his index finger towards my temple, asking me again if the sky was still blue.

If I had known what it meant to love, I wouldn't have had children, because once we love, we love forever, like Uncle Two's wife, Step-aunt Two, who can't stop loving her gambler son, the son who is burning up the family fortune like a pyromaniac.

Anh tặng emCuộc đời anh không sốngGiấc mơ anh chỉ mơMột tâm hồn để trốngNhững đêm trắng mong chờAnh tặng emBài thơ anh không viếtNỗi đau anh đi tìmMàu mây anh chưa biếtTha thiết của lặng imI offer youThe life I have not livedThe dream I can but dreamA soul I've left emptyDuring sleepless nightsAs I go to you I hold as an offeringThe poem I have not writtenThe ache towards which I strainThe colour of the cloud I haven't knownThe longings of silence.

...love comes from the head and not the heart. Of the entire body, only the head matters.

As a child, I thought that war and peace were opposites. Yet I lived in peace when Vietnam was in flames and I didn't experience war until Vietnam had laid down its weapons. I believe that war and peace are actually friends, who mock us.