Viet Thanh Nguyen Quotes

“Quoting Nguyen Du - Talent and destiny are apt to feud.”

“Fight for her. But more than that… fight for yourself. Don’t be afraid of the disorder that love causes. It crashes around you. It blinds you. It heals you. But, more than anything else, Dillan, when you find the right one, it no longer feels like chaos. It’s like a series of falling dominos that pierces your heart. It elevates you into another plain of existence. All at once you realize you’ve never breathed real life until you truly experience love. Breathe, Dillan. Just… breathe. ~ Tanner Nguyen”

“Instead of more consumerism – the buying of experiences, the accumulation of things, of eating the ‘other’ – perhaps writers should name their own environment. What is the shape of your watershed? How is your electricity produced? Where is your water treated? Where is your food produced and by whom and how does it travel to your local market? What are the names of the rocks under your feet and around you? What formed those geological features? Who were the first humans here? What flora and fauna live upon it and what are their habits and interfaces? What stars whirl above you and what names have they been given, what lore? How can one trace the relations, find the slippages between histories, the linkages, to find the complexities in naming and of the named? Travel as one’s carbon footprint; travel as a footstep, travel as a naming in a landscape in all its complexity. Homing as a way to place oneself in a constellation of process and being.”

“Look closely at your greatest thoughts about yourself. That's your future.”

“Ordinary people never win.”

“I am the best person in the universe.”

“I joined the People's Armed Forces in 1961 to 1984, and I was also a soldier in the southern battle of Vietnam during the resistance against the Americans. I went to the battlefield in order to regain national independence.”

“You can say nothing by saying everything. You can say everything by saying nothing.”

“Journalism delivers news, but not necessarily relevance.”

“Blaming the ex for the breakup is like blaming the clothes for not fitting you.”