“As Hegel said, tragedy was not the conflict between right and wrong but right and right, a dilemma none of us who wanted to participate in history could escape. The major had the right to live, and I was right to kill him. Wasn't I?”
Viet Thanh Nguyen“Quoting Nguyen Du - Talent and destiny are apt to feud.”
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer“Not to own the means of production can lead to premature death, but not to own the means of representation is also a kind of death. For if we are represented by others, might they not, one day, hose our deaths off memory's laminated floor?”
Viet Thanh Nguyen“All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.”
Viet Thanh Nguyen“Every full bottle of alcohol has a message in it, a surprise that one will not discover until one drinks it”
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer“Priests always had much attention lavished on them by their starstruck fans,those devout housewives and wealthy congregants who treated them as if they were guardians of the velvet rope blocking entrance into that ever so exclusive nightclub, Heaven.”
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer“I had the vertiginous feeling one gets standing at the precipice of an unresolved plan, for I had brought Bon and myself to the brink of disaster without knowing how to save us. But was not this how all plans developed, unknown to their maker until he wove for himself a parachute, or else melted into air?”
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer“If God did not exist, then neither did divine punishment, but this meant nothing to ghosts who did not need God.”
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer“We lie in wait for the right moment and the just cause, which, at this moment, is simply wanting to live.”
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer“Remember, you're not half of anything, you're twice of everything.”
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer“That is what revolutionaries do. We sacrifice ourselves to save others.”
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer