Veronica Yu

“I had never seen so much movement in sleep before—except in dogs who run in dreams none of us will ever know.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn't get interested in leaving life or living it, let alone the fright of two creeping-off boys. Her past had been like her present—intolerable—and since she knew death was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left her for pondering color.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Ma, to speak in our mother tongue is to speak only partially in Vietnamese, but entirely in war.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Have you ever made a scene,' you said, filling in a Thomas Kinkade house, 'and then put yourself inside it? Have you ever watched yourself from behind, going further and deeper into that landscape, away from you?'

How could I tell you that what you were describing was writing? How could I say that we, after all, are so close, the shadows of our hands, on two different pages, merging?”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous