My Lai Quotes & Sayings

Why no s for two deer,
but an s for two monkeys?
Brother Quang says
no one knows.
So much for rules!
Whoever invented English should be bitten by a snake. — Thanhha Lai

Setting up absurd worlds with rules to violate - it's one of the things I hope to achieve with my work. — Jimenez Lai

I think of architecture as language, and I look within the intra-communication between architects. — Jimenez Lai

Mother tells me,
They tease you
because they adore you. — Thanhha Lai

If one morning in the Spring, a stranger came and said to me, Your mother, father, brother, sister, uncle, lover, friend, is dead. From a b-52, napalm bombing, search and destroy mission, air attack, Tet offensive, My Lai massacre, failed escape, I would not scream but make of my body a net, a tarp, stretched taut across the sky, the sea, over every village and hamlet. Prepared to catch everything from the sky, shade everything on the ground, rain water and receive you, war, with arms outstretched. — Le Thi Diem Thuy

It is a little bit humiliating when I have to say that Chou En-lai to me appears as the most superior brain I have so far met in the field of foreign politics ... so much more dangerous than you imagine because he is so much better a man than you have ever admitted. — Dag Hammarskjold

The world is meaningless and therefore it's funny. — Jimenez Lai

Many artists I enjoy have a large body of work, and eventually the message is derived out from the sum of its parts. — Jimenez Lai

I tell you of loss, my child, so you will listen, slowly, and know that in life every emotion is fated to rear itself within your being. Don't judge it proper or ugly. It's simply there and yours. When you should happen to cry, then cry, knowing that just as easily you will laugh again and cry again. Your feelings will enter the currents of your core and there they shall remain — Thanhha Lai

Morphology happens over time. It's not necessarily a bad thing. — Jimenez Lai

I see architecture as a form of communication over time. — Jimenez Lai

No, Mr. Johnston doesn't have a horse, nor has he ever ridden one. What kind of a cowboy is he? — Thanhha Lai

The library was a great sprawling complex with rolls and rolls of paper tucked into many shelves. Between the reading rooms were courtyards with living fountains and singing birds and butterflies that would transform into handsome young women to guide or entertain anyone who stayed there any length of time. I saw one among the stacks, explaining an older style of calligraphy to the newly appointed Heavenly Marine Official of the South China Sea. In another wing, a librarian stepped from her chrysalis for the first time, reciting T'ang Dynasty poetry to the flowers. That's how I knew I was in the right section. — Larissa Lai

As a visual discourse, architecture requires trained individuals to work on the refined philosophical debates. School gave me the necessary training, and I've built on this based on my own aesthetics, as most do. — Jimenez Lai

When you own nothing, it's hard to believe you have anything to lose. — Larissa Lai

If I were to arrive at a foreign country like Czech Republic, I don't have to speak Czech to understand the feeling of the local sensations through architecture. That is a kind of communication that no language can perform. — Jimenez Lai

The diagram of the house is a portrait of the family, a true portrait, whether it's sad or happy. — Jimenez Lai

The role of architecture, in terms of communication, is not going to drastically change either. — Jimenez Lai

In order to break free from the chains that bind, one must take whatever action they can to disconnect internally from the larger systems of oppression, of which the family unit is merely a microcosm. — Sil Lai Abrams

Writing is my life. Life is my hobby. — Emma Lai

It was then that stories of the dreaming disease began to circulate more widely. We heard from our customers of a girl who smelled of cooking oil, who remembered all the wars ever fought. She could recall and recount every death, every rape, every wound, every moment of suffering that had ever been inflicted by a member of her ancestral lineage. The only place she could find relief from this barrage of collective memory was in water. — Larissa Lai

What's interesting in archaeology is that we always understand other cultures by digging up their cities; architecture is almost always a way for us to formulate a diagram of how people used to live. — Jimenez Lai

This story is about stink, after all, a story about rot, about how life grows out of the most fetid-smelling places. I leaned into the wall of the coiled cabin, snail, the body curled in upon itself, spine coiled, a snake lying in wait. — Larissa Lai

Would be simpler
if English
and life
were logical — Thanhha Lai

All day
I practice
squeezing hisses
through my teeth.

Whoever invented
English
must have loved
snakes. — Thanhha Lai

Mother says,
People share
when they know they have escaped hunger.
Shouldn't people share
because there is hunger? — Thanhha Lai

True revolutionary change begins by first challenging yourself -- not the world. Until you own your story and the complexities of your experience, no matter how much you may strain against it, you will still be enslaved -- if not by your oppressor, by your past. — Sil Lai Abrams

The photographs of the inmates at Bergen-Belsen or Andersonville Prison or the bodies in the ditch at My Lai disturb us in a singular fashion because those instances of egregious human cruelty were committed for the most part by baptized Christians. — James Lee Burke

The dining room is a building; the bathroom is a building. If we scatter this single-program architecture inside of a domestic environment, we can link an interior urbanism in a way similar to a village or a township of tiny houses. — Jimenez Lai

Aesthetics is both politics and philosophy, a series of agreements and disagreements between subjective minds. — Jimenez Lai

Being stubborn won't make you fluent. Practicing will! The more mistakes you make, the more you'll learn not to. — Thanhha Lai

I hate being told I can't do something because I'm a girl! — Thanhha Lai

Unlike sciences, literature as art relies on societal acceptance of a certain vocabulary. — Jimenez Lai

When I would present my work as a student, often I would hear, "Your project is too formal" - it's too form-based; it's too form-driven. Which is kind of shocking for a visual practice, for someone to say something discouraging about a focus on an exploration of aesthetics. — Jimenez Lai

No one would believe me but at times I would choose wartime in Saigon over peacetime in Alabama.-Inside Out and Back Again — Thanhha Lai

I wish
our cowboy could be persuaded
to buy a horse,

that I could be invisible
until I can talk back — Thanhha Lai

Everyone knows the ship could sink, unable to hold the piles of bodies that keep crawling on like raging ants from a disrupted nest. But no one is heartless enough to say stop because what if they had been stopped before their turn? — Thanhha Lai

It is possible to construct small realities that contain political or philosophical responses, not necessarily just practical or economical responses. — Jimenez Lai

Architecture, in itself, at the end of the day, is a rational profession. — Jimenez Lai

I saw sunrises fade and burn among fleets of sparks. The moon blossomed
like a lily carved of bone ...
The Death of the Astronaut, page 390. — Lewis Turco

'These boat people,' says the government of Hong Kong, 'they all want to go to America.' Well, I swear I don't know why, do you? I mean, take Vietnam. Why would any Vietnamese come to America after what American did to Vietnam? Don't they remember My Lai, napalm, Sylvester Stallone? — Linda Ellerbee

The obsession was so real and so prolonged. Sleeping was kind of like taking breaks from continuing the obsession. — Jimenez Lai

I think architecture could be understood as the construction of realities, or the construction of worlds. — Jimenez Lai

A poster of the massacre at My Lai, picturing women and children lying clumped together in a heap, their bodies riddled with bullets, hung on my wall as a daily reminder of the brutality in the world. — Assata Shakur

I am a cultural Frankinstein — Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen

I am a cultural Frankenstein — Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen

The only American soldier convicted in the [My Lai Massacre in Vietnam], Lieutenant William Calley, served three months under house arrest. What the massacre drove home to me was that Oriental life was not terribly valuable. You could extinguish hundreds of Orientals - unarmed villagers, farmers, women, toddlers, infants - and the penalty would be napping and watching television in your apartment for twelve weeks. — Alex Tizon

Tzu Li went to see Tzu Lai who was dying. Leaning against the door, he said, 'Great is the Creator! What will he make of you now? Will he make you into a rat's liver? Will he make you into an insect's leg?' Tzu-Lai replied, 'The universe gave me my body so I may be carried, my life so I may work, my old age so I may repose, and my death so I may rest. To regard life as good is the way to regard death as good ... If I regard the universe as a great furnace and creation as a master foundryman, why should anywhere I go not be all right?' — Zhuangzi

I'm trying to tell
MiSSSisss WaSShington
about our ceremony for Father.
But it takes time to
match every noun and verb,
sort all the tenses,
remember all the articles,
set the tone for every s.
MiSSSisss WaSShington says
if every learner waits
to speak perfectly,
no one would learn
a new language.
Being stubborn
won't make you fluent.
Practicing will!
The more mistakes you make,
the more you'll learn not to.
They laugh. — Thanhha Lai

The moment you put something down on paper it forces you to organize and arrange these thoughts a little better. — Jimenez Lai

I believe architecture is a cultural output and I think Rem Koolhaas is one of the rare individuals who was able to really output architecture as cultural artifact. — Jimenez Lai

Every time I traveled to a new city, I would learn about local heroes I did not know about, and I would learn about their very impressive contribution to their cities. — Jimenez Lai

Mostly, I wish I were still smart. — Thanhha Lai

How easily we abandon those who have suffered the same persecutions as we have. How quickly we grow impatient with their inability to transcend the conditions of our lives. — Larissa Lai

Do not waste ... Don't waste the vegetable-washing water, splash it on the grapefruit tree instead ... Don't waste anything made of glass or plastic because glass and plastic can be reused ad nauseam ... Don't waste ... a string for retying, a rubber band for conquering dry noodles or hair, rice bags for dishcloths, fish bones for fertilizer ... Anything that comes out of the earth must be returned to the earth ... "If everyone uses more than their share, how can the earth support us?" — Thanhha Lai

Oh, my daughter,
at times you have to fight,
but preferably
not with your fists. — Thanhha Lai

The hardest - the part that's hard is to kill, but once you kill, that becomes easier, to kill the next person and the next one and the next one." -Varnado Simpson, Charlie Company of My Lai — Jonathan Glover

I have no definable history before I was abandoned and taken in by the orphanage in Hong Kong. I truly am a blank sheet. I have been disconnected from my ancestors. I don't know who they are, where they came from or whether any of their line still exists. The ancestral umbilical cord that would have connected me to my past and linked me to my future, was permanently severed. It cannot be reattached — Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen

Mother warns
how we act today
foretells the whole year — Thanhha Lai

It's important to write a mystery novel where the takeaway is not a giveaway - where something could be read over and over. — Jimenez Lai

This year I hope
I truly learn
to fly-kick
not to kick anyone
so much as
to fly. — Thanhha Lai

I tell you of my loss, child, so you will listen, slowly, and know that in life every emotion is fated to rear itself within your being. Don't judge it proper or ugly. It's simply there and yours. — Thanhha Lai

My curse: rebellious in my head but oh-so-lovely in real life. — Thanhha Lai

In some cases there are ways of thinking about what an architectural program produces - interior and exterior - that is not necessarily directed by an economic requirement, but is a diagram based on human actions, selfish or otherwise. — Jimenez Lai