Vuong Quotes & Sayings

There always was blood in the deep, dark depths of despair and tragedy, wasn't there? — Meghan Ciana Doidge

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

I've decided to totally rededicate my entire life to being a private eye. Your life, too." "Is this like all your other rededications?" "No!" Serge pounded his fist on the dash. "Those were all spur-of-the-moment impulsive flights of silliness. Like my last idiotic idea of becoming a house hunter. Where's the challenge? — Tim Dorsey

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

In order for things to change, YOU MUST change. If you don't change, then nothing will change. IF you will change, EVERYTHING will change for you. — Duc Vuong

And if I am elected, I promise the formation of a new party, a third party, a wild party. — Alice Cooper

Just when you feel like hauling him off and strangling hin, he gets some goal out of nowhere. — Martin O'Neill

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

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

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

We want to bring better products to Vietnam. My hope is through changes in lifestyle and the products we consume, it will affect the people and change the way they are thinking. — Pham Nhat 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

Vietnamese are very similar to the Chinese. They just can't sit on gold bars underneath their beds. Eventually, they will pull out their gold bars and invest. — Pham Nhat 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

Attacking is better than defending. — Pham Nhat Vuong

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

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

From The Gambler:
You've got to know when to hold them, Know when to fold them, Know when to walk away, Know when to run, But you should never count your money,
Until the dealings done.

reworked...

You've got to know what you told them, Know when to be bold with them, Know when to have your say, Know when to have fun, But you should always count your blessings, Especially when any day you might be done. — Tony Marino

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

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

It was clear from the beginning that I was going to be a musician. — Andrew Gold

Unhappy times are the best for levity. You don't light candles in the middle of the day, do you? — Joe Abercrombie

Order is not sufficient. What is required, is something much more complex. It is order entering upon novelty; so that the massiveness of order does not degenerate into mere repetition; and so that the novelty is always reflected upon a background of system. — Alfred North Whitehead