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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“It is just as easy to bring death to man, and I’ve done so. It’s harder to keep hold of life, harder still to maintain a grasp on health. Those are the tasks to which we must keep our minds.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician
“In other words: It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not. Or, more bluntly: Wherever I am not is the place where I am myself. Or else, taking the bull by the horns: Anywhere out of the world.”
― Paul Auster, quote from The New York Trilogy
“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Women
“He turned his head and caught her with his eyes. She froze, locked by the intensity of his stare. His eyes were stark and cold, the concentrated green of pale jade. Outlined in smudged black kohl, those eyes focused on her, unblinking through the feathery strands of his jet black hair, and it was like being watched through a cage by a complacent and calculating cat.
Discomfort welled in her, thick and black as an oil spring. Who was this guy and what was his royal problem? Her gaze flicked briefly to the small metal loop that hugged one corner of his bottom lip.
He blinked once, then slowly lifted one hand and crooked a beckoning finger at her. Isobel hesitated but then as though spellbound to obey, she found herself leaning in.
“What are you staring at?” he whispered.”
― Kelly Creagh, quote from Nevermore
“Someday Rufus would own the plantation. Someday, he would be the slaveholder, responsible in his own right for what happened to the people who lived in those half-hidden cabins. The boy was literally growing up as I watched—growing up because I watched and because I helped to keep him safe. I was the worst possible guardian for him—a black to watch over him in a society that considered blacks subhuman, a woman to watch over him in a society that considered women perennial children. I would have all I could do to look after myself. But I would help him as best I could. And I would try to keep friendship with him, maybe plant a few ideas in his mind that would help both me and the people who would be his slaves in the years to come.”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Kindred
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