Kim Thuy Quotes & Sayings

Those visits to the beautician allowed me to reproduce on my body those red dots of Luc's that I knew by heart. I think that on the day when I have all those red dots tattooed, if I were to join them, I would be drawing the map if his destiny on my body. And maybe on that day he will show up at my door, take me by the hand as he always did instinctively, and stop me from saying "Disaster" as he kisses me. — Kim Thuy

A Saigon Proverb: Doe la chine tran, neu buon la thua. Life is a struggle in which sorrow leads to defeat. — Kim Thuy

A Vietnamese saying has it that "Only those with long hair are afraid, for no one can pull the hair of those who have none." And so I try as much as possible to acquire only those things that don't extend beyond the limits of my body. — Kim Thuy

I learned that music comes from the voice, the rhythm and the heart of each person, and that the musicality of those unrecorded melodies could lift the curtain of fog, pass through windows and screens to waken us as gently as a morning lullaby. — Kim Thuy

When I meet young girls in Montreal or elsewhere who injure their bodies intentionally, deliberately, who want permanent scars to be drawn on their skin, I can't help secretly wishing they could meet other young girls whose permament scars are so deep they're invisible to the naked eye. I would like to seat them face to face and hear them make comparisons between a wanted scar and an inflicted scar, one that's paid for, the other that pays off, one visible, the other impenetrable, one inordinately sensitive, the other unfanthomable, one drawn, the other misshapen. — Kim Thuy

History flung the accents on our names into the water when it took us across the Gulf of Siam thirty years ago. — Kim Thuy

He had stopped time by continuing to enjoy himself, to live until the end with the lightness of a young man. — Kim Thuy

Love comes from the head and not the heart. Of the entire body, only the head matters. — Kim Thuy

He is someone who lives in the moment, with no affection for the past. He savours every instant of the present as if it were still the best and only time, with no comparisons, no measurement. — Kim Thuy

And also, where an outstretched hand is no longer a gesture but a moment of love, lasting until sleep, until waking, until everyday life. — Kim Thuy

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. — Kim Thuy

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. — Kim Thuy

Every gift we offered was a genuine gift, because it represented a sacrifice and it answered a need, a desire or a dream — Kim Thuy

I remember some students in my high school who complained about the compulsory history classes. Young as we were, we didn't realize that the course was a privilege only countries at peace can afford. Elsewhere, — Kim Thuy

I should have chosen the moment before the arrival of my children, for since then I've lost the option of dying. The sharp smell of their sun-baked hair, the smell of sweat on their backs when they wake from a nightmare, the dusty smell of their hands when they leave a classroom, meant that I had to live, to be dazzled by the shadow of their eyelashes, moved by a snowflake, bowled over by a tear on their cheek. My children have given me the exclusive power to blow on a wound to make the pain disappear, to understand words unpronounced, to possess the universal truth, to be a fairy. A fairy smitten with the way they smell. — Kim Thuy

Elsewhere, people are too preoccupied by their day-to-day survival to take the time to write their collective history. — Kim Thuy

Intensely craving a salad of green papaya with bird chilies that tore your mouth apart, that burned your lips, set fire to your heart. — Kim Thuy

From country to country as if it were an anchor, or the memory of dropping the first anchor. — Kim Thuy

I moved forward in the trace of their footsteps as in a waking dream where the scent of a newly blown poppy is no longer a perfume but a blossoming: where the deep red of a maple leaf in autumn is no longer a colour but a grace; where a country is no longer a place but a lullaby. — Kim Thuy

I didn't cry out and I didn't weep when I was told that my son Henri was a prisoner in his own world, when it was confirmed that he is one of those children who don't hear us, don't speak to us, even though they're neither deaf nor mute. He is also one of those children we must love from a distance, neither touching, nor kissing, not smiling at them because every one of their senses would be assaulted by the odour of our skin, by the intensity of our voices, the texture of our hair, the throbbing of our hearts. Probably he'll never call me maman lovingly, even if he can pronounce the world poire with all the roundness and sensuality of the oi sound. He will never understand why I cried when he smiled for the first time. He won't know that, thanks to him, every spark of joy has become a blessing and that I will keep waging war against autism, even if I know already that it's invincible. Already, I am defeated, stripped bare, beaten down. — Kim Thuy

My parents often remind my brothers and me that they won't have any money for us to inherit, but I think they've already passed on to us the wealth of their memories, allowing us to grasp the beauty of a flowering wisteria, the delicacy of a word, the power of wonder. Even more, they've given us feet for walking to our dreams, to infinity. Which may be enough baggage to continue our journey on our own. Otherwise, we would pointlessly clutter our path with possessions to transport, to insure, to take care of. — Kim Thuy

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. — Kim Thuy