Kien Nguyen · 343 pages
Rating: (1.8K votes)
“Don't let this anger ruin your life any more than it already has. If you want to every achieve happiness, don't dwell on the past. Instead, start living. What is the point of obsessing that has already happened, and that you cannot change? Live! And be merry.”
― Kien Nguyen, quote from The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood
“Hit me again, and I'll report you to the authorities. Follow me to my bed one more time, and I swear to the gods, I'll search for the most painful way to murder you.”
― Kien Nguyen, quote from The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood
“I can't go to America. I don't want to go to any foreign land where I don't speak the language or know the customs. I'd rather die here by the Vietcong's hands, among my ancestors, than live like a ghost among strangers. You go!”
― Kien Nguyen, quote from The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood
“In all of my years doing this job, I have never given the drug to anyone over three months pregnant; not once, because everybody listens to me, except you.”
― Kien Nguyen, quote from The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood
“No longer did she look like a shy little maid who was trained to censor her thought before it reached her mouth. These past few days had turned her into a reserved yet intelligent young woman.”
― Kien Nguyen, quote from The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood
“Lying half-asleep in his embrace, I looked up and saw on his face the same expression I saw on countless lonely faces every day. It was the homesick look of the children who were lost in the chaos of warfare, witnessing death and disaster, longing for a meaningful touch.”
― Kien Nguyen, quote from The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood
“Come up here. Tell us your story.”
― Kien Nguyen, quote from The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood
“Take a close look at your life if you dare. Do you understand why you allow your children to harass mine? Jealousy, that's why. You are jealous of the fact that all of your fourteen children could never measure up in Daddy's eyes as much as one half-breed of mine. It hurts, doesn't it? Knowing that your children can never be good enough. But how could they? Just look at them, and the parents that gave life to them. I sincerely hope that I never have to see your face again.”
― Kien Nguyen, quote from The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood
“In the sallow afternoon, I watched her get dressed.”
― Kien Nguyen, quote from The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood
“Never had I beheld such despair.”
― Kien Nguyen, quote from The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood
“I don't have anything to give you, except to show you a way to better yourself.”
― Kien Nguyen, quote from The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood
Kien Nguyen
Born place: in Nhatrang, Viet Nam
Born date January 1, 1967
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“No matter what heaven you believe in, your time on this earth will end. What I’m saying is that you should listen—really listen—to the slosh of the waves and the distant call of Pacific birds. You should feel a boy’s pulse against your cheek; you should fill your lungs with ocean air. While you can, I mean. You should do these things while you still can.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“In ten years I’d never had an interesting teacher. I was beginning to think they were myths, like unicorns and comfortable high heels.
Eve, Jaymin (2014-01-15). First World (A Walker Saga Book 1) (p. 19). . Kindle Edition.”
― Jaymin Eve, quote from First World
“Because she was solid gold, fourteen-carat, barely burnished despite twenty years of hard molling. But beneath it, I knew, beneath that gold and stardust, she was all grit and sharp teeth gnashing, head twisting, talons out, tearing flesh. She was all open mouth, tunneling into an awful nothing.”
― Megan Abbott, quote from Queenpin
“All this was as it should be, because welfare and happiness of the world depended on him, and wearied though he was he would still not refuse universe the assistence.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from Hadji Murad
“Each of us is now electronically connected to the globe, and yet we feel utterly alone.”
― Dan Brown, quote from Angels & Demons - Malaikat dan Iblis
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