of course he's read the secret history!!
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āThe Vietnamese I own is the one you gave me, the one whose diction and syntax reach only the second-grade levelā¦ Our mother tongue, then, is no mother tongue at allā but an orphan. Our Vietnamese a time capsule, a mark of where your education ended, ashed. Ma, to speak only in our mother tongue is to speak only partially in Vietnamese, but entirely in war.ā
On Earth Weāre Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
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āI sit, with all my theories, metaphors, and equations, Shakespeare and Milton, Barthes, Du Fu, and Homer, masters of death who canāt, at last, teach me how to touch my dead.ā
On Earth Weāre Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
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āTo stay tender, the weight of your life cannot lean on your bones.ā
On Earth Weāre Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
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āBecause I am your son, what I know of work I know equally of loss. And what I know of both I know of your hands. Their once supple contours Iāve never felt, the palms already calluses and blistered long before I was born, the. ruined further from three decades in factories and nail salons. Your hands are hideousā and I hate everything that made them that way. I hate how they are the wrecks and reckoning of a dream.ā
On Earth Weāre Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
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āThe same questions echo through both of them: What sort of police officers canāt even look after their own daughter and sister? What sort of family canāt help one of their own to help herself? What sort of god makes a priest ill, and what sort of daughter doesnāt show up for the funeral?ā
Anxious People, Fredrik Backman
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āWe need to be allowed to convince ourselves that weāre more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.ā
Anxious People, Fredrik Backman
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āBut much more important is the fear about myself. In the sense that in my writing, and in everything that goes with it, there is some hope of independence and escapeā even though it hasnāt taken me very far and I donāt believe it will go further.ā
Letter to my Father, Franz Kafka
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āAnd in the world there was just you and meā which I have often feltā and with you the purity ended, and with me the filth began.ā
Letter to my Father, Franz Kafka
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āāCome back down,ā he said, his expression suddenly grim. His fingers clenched tight around hers. āListen Rin, I donāt care what else happens up there. But you come back to me.āā
The Burning God, R.F. Kuang
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āHe looked so beautiful then, standing right in the space of the road where a beam of moonlight fell across his face, illuminating one side and casting long shadows on the other. He looked glazed porcelain, preserved glass. He was a sculptorās approximation of a person, not human himself. He canāt be real, she thought. A boy made of flesh and bone could not be so painfully lovely, so free of any blemish or flaw.ā
The Poppy War, R.F. Kuang
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āāI could see the constellations. Every night. I saw the star of the Phoenix and thought that if I could just slip away, I could swim and keep swimming and find my way back home.ā
The Poppy War, R.F. Kuang
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āThen I grasped the meaning of the greatest that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.ā
Manās Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl
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āThatās how it feels right now, he thinks, kneeling beside her, rinsing her hair: as though his love for his daughter will outstrip the limits of his body. The walls could fall away, even the whole city, and the brightness of that feeling would not wane.ā
All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
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āAnd will you bring me home again?ā he asked.
āYes. Iāll bring you home again.ā
āJe tāaime, tu sais?ā
āJe le sais, mon vieux.ā
Giovanniās Room, James Baldwin
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je veux māevader.
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āAnd he cries and cries, cries for everything he has been, for everything he might have been, for every old hurt, for every old happiness, cries for the shame and joy of finally getting to be a child, with all of a childās whims and wants and insecurities, for the privilege of behaving badly and being forgiven, for the luxury of tendernesses, of fondnesses, of being served a meal and being made to eat it, for the ability, at last, at last, of believing a parentās reassurances, of believing that to someone he is special despite all his mistakes and hatefulness, because of all his mistakes and hatefulness.ā
A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara
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