Daniel

“I sit, with all my theories, metaphors, and equations, Shakespeare and Milton, Barthes, Du Fu, and Homer, masters of death who can’t, at last, teach me how to touch my dead.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“He was a boy breaking out and into himself at once. That's what I wanted—not merely the body, desirable as it was, but its will to grow into the very world that rejects its hunger. Then I wanted more, the scent, the atmosphere of him, the taste of French fries and peanut butter under the salve of his tongue, the salt around his neck from two hour drives to nowhere and a Burger King at the edge of the county, a day of tense talk with his old man, the rust from the electric razor he shared with that old man, how I would always find it on the sink in its sad plastic case, the tobacco, weed and cocaine smoke on his fingers mixed with motor oil, all of it accumulating into the afterscent of wood smoke caught and soaked in his hair, as if when he came to me, his mouth wet and wanting, he came from a place on fire, a place he could never return to.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“What is a country but a life sentence?”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous