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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“Paul said in the second epistle to the good chap you were named after, ‘The time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine . . . they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn from the truth and wander away to myths.”
― Jan Karon, quote from Out to Canaan
“Lindsey: Why would you choose me?
Rafe: Because you're the one I want.”
― Rachel Hawthorne, quote from Full Moon
“winter?” She traced a circle on his breastbone, her touch”
― Elizabeth Hoyt, quote from The Leopard Prince
“May’s haircuts were Marblehead’s version of a magic show. The townie kids used to form lines up and down Front Street to watch as Mr. Dooling pulled the rattail comb through my mother’s hair. With each pull, the comb would snag on something, then stop. As he reached into the mass to unwind the tangle, he would find and remove everything from sea glass to shells to smooth stones. In one particularly matted tangle, he found a sea horse. Once he even found a postcard sent from Tahiti to someone in Beverly Farms.”
― Brunonia Barry, quote from The Lace Reader
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” She coughed, and released Talaith’s hand. “Except
you have some powerful enemies.”
“Tell me what I don’t know, witch.”
“Powerful enemies who are gods.”
For a moment, Annwyl was shocked beyond all reason…then
she shrugged. “Now that I think of it—I don’t know why I would be
surprised.”
― quote from About a Dragon
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