202 Quotes by Ocean Vuong

I came to know, in those afternoons, that madness can sometimes lead to discovery, that the mind, fractured and short-wired, is not entirely wrong.

They will tell you that great writing “breaks free” from the political, thereby “transcending” the barriers of difference, uniting people toward universal truths. They’ll say this is achieved through craft above all. Let’s see how it’s made, they’ll say—as if how something is assembled is alien to the impulse that created it.

Let me begin again.

No object is in a constant relationship with pleasure, wrote Barthes. For the writer, however, it is the mother tongue. But what if the mother tongue is stunted? What if that tongue is not only the symbol of a void, but is itself a void, what if the tongue is cut out? Can one take pleasure in loss without losing oneself entirely? The Vietnamese I own is the one you gave me, the one whose diction and syntax reach only the second-grade level.

If we are lucky, the end of a sentence is where we might begin. If we are lucky, something is passed on, another alphabet written in the blood, sinew, and neuron; ancestors charging their kin with the silent propulsion to fly south, to turn toward the place in the narrative no one was meant to outlast.

They say if you want something bad enough you’ll end up making a god out of it. But what if all I ever wanted was my life, Ma?

A pillaged village is a fine example of a perfect rhyme. He said that.He was white. Or maybe, I was just beside myself, next to him.Either way, I forgot his name by heart.

Even my nameknelt down inside me, askingto be spared.

Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn.Say autumn despite the greenin your eyes. Beauty despitedaylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawnmounting in your throat.My thrashing beneath youlike a sparrow stunnedwith falling.