Ocean Vuong Quotes & Sayings

Brooklyn's too cold tonight
& all my friends are three years away.
My mother said I could be anything
I wanted - but I chose to live.
On the stoop of an old brownstone,
a cigarette flares, then fades.
I walk towards it: a razor
sharpened with silence.
A jawline etched in smoke.
The mouth where I'll be made
new again. Stranger, palpable
echo, here is my hand, filled
with blood thin as a widow's
tears. I am ready. I am ready
to be every animal
you leave behind. — Ocean Vuong

Dear God, if you are a season, let it be the one I passed through
to get here.

Here. That's all I wanted to be.

I promise. — Ocean Vuong

what becomes of the shepherd / when the sheep are cannibals? — Ocean Vuong

Language excites me. Irrational thought excites me. I spend most of my time listening instead of writing. A shard of language might come: a phrase, a word, an anagram, and I'd just keep it in my pocket, like a little seed, warming in my fist. — Ocean Vuong

Don't we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The — Ocean Vuong

Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.

Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn.
Say autumn despite the green
in your eyes. Beauty despite
daylight. Say you'd kill for it. Unbreakable dawn
mounting in your throat.
My thrashing beneath you
like a sparrow stunned
with falling. — Ocean Vuong

Sometimes I ask for too much just to feel my mouth overflow. — Ocean Vuong

Confetti
green, how I want you green.
Green despite the red despite
the rest. — Ocean Vuong

I didn't know the cost
of entering a song - was to lose
your way back. — Ocean Vuong

When our lips touched the day closed
into a coffin. In the museum of the heart... — Ocean Vuong

How sweet. That rain. How something that lives only to fall can be nothing but sweet. — Ocean Vuong

Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets. Like how the spine
won't remember its wings
no matter how many times our knees
kiss the pavement. Ocean,
are you listening? The most beautiful part
of your body is wherever
your mother's shadow falls. — Ocean Vuong

When they ask you where you're from, tell them your name was fleshed from the toothless mouth of a war-woman. That you were not born but crawled, headfirst - into the hunger of dogs. My son, tell them the body is a blade that sharpens by cutting. — Ocean Vuong

The most beautiful part of your body
is where it's headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world. — Ocean Vuong

When we left it, the city was still smoldering. Otherwise it was a perfect spring morning. White hyacinths gasped in the embassy lawn. The sky was September-blue and the pigeons went on pecking at bits of bread scattered by the bombed bakery. Broken baguettes. Crushed croissants. Gutted cars. A carousel spinning its blackened horses. He said the shadow of missiles growing larger on the sidewalk looked like god playing an air piano above us. — Ocean Vuong