Rachel Khong > Quotes

“What imperfect carriers of love we are, and what imperfect givers. That the reasons we can care for one another can have nothing to do with the person cared for. That it has only to do with who we were around that person—what we felt about that person.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

“If I were you is something I’ve never really understood. Why say, “If I were you”? Why say, “If I were you,” when the problem is you’re not me? I wish people would say, “Since I am me,” followed by whatever advice it is they have.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

“Sharing things is how things get started, and not sharing things is how they end.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

“A long time ago I stopped wondering why there are so many crazy people. What surprises me now is that there are so many sane ones.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

“Time passes, indifferent to me. So much of my life I have let slip by, because I have not attended to it. All this while, instead of seeking more time, I could have been paying attention.”
― Rachel Khong, Real Americans

“You know what else I unfair, about Joel? That I loosened the jar lid, so somebody else could open him up.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

“But most people in America, those who are fed and clothed and housed, can choose what to care about. From your comfortable position you can decide if you want to know about people in Syria or Myanmar, with the flip of a television switch.”
― Rachel Khong, Real Americans

“It doesn’t matter who remembers what, I guess, so long as somebody remembers something.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

“As a parent, she had sought to do the opposite of what her mother had done - not expecting Nick to resemble her, not burdening him with her expectations. And yet was she any different? Could love between a mother and child be anything less than completely overwhelming?”
― Rachel Khong, Real Americans

“I don't know how I got to be thirty. I don't feel thirty, the way I felt so definitely nine, and thirteen, and twenty-one.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

“It’s all so messed up. I think what it is, is that when I was young, my mother was her best version of herself. And here I am, now, a shitty grown-up, and messing it all up, and a disappointment. What imperfect carriers of love we are, and what imperfect givers. That the reasons we can care for one another can have nothing to do with the person cared for. That it has only to do with who we were around that person—what we felt about that person. Here’s the fear: she gave to us, and we took from her, until she disappeared.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

“Today we went over to your mother’s friend’s house for dinner. We’d asked you to be polite, so you said, “No more, please, it’s horrible thank you.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

“It was grotesque, the way I kept trying to save that relationship. Like trying to tuck an elephant into pants.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

“I'd thought transporting me to another setting was all that was needed to render me normal. I'd failed to consider that I might be the same person here.”
― Rachel Khong, Real Americans

“We were told what to want: Propaganda was universal. Especially in this country, where the propaganda was that there was none - we were free. But were we? When we were made to value certain lives more than others; when we were made, relentlessly, to want more? What if I had seen through it? What if I had understood that I already had enough?”
― Rachel Khong, Real Americans

“I wanted to tell Betty's granddaughter that it wasn't too late. That I had been like her, once, resentful of any interruptions. Later, I learned that life lay in the interruptions - that I had been wrong about life, entirely.”
― Rachel Khong, Real Americans

“She had never been comfortable, as a younger person. There was so much expectation placed on the young, who were uniformly full of potential, who could change the world, until they did or didn't. Nobody expected anything remarkable from a woman her age.”
― Rachel Khong, Real Americans

“In the act of giving I conceded that I had more than I needed, and someone had far less than they did. It was for no real reason, it wasn't fair. It shattered the illusion of my own free will - that I had made choices, and those choices had resulted in my life.”
― Rachel Khong, Real Americans

“It was books, the immense volume of them, that opened my eyes to how little we understood about the world we inhabited: a world that appeared ordinary in its dailiness yet contained mysteries upon mysteries, one door opening onto another.”
― Rachel Khong, Real Americans

“How thoughtless we had been, to believe that trees needed to be useful, or that usefulness was even the point.”
― Rachel Khong, Real Americans

“Aren't we lucky? Our DNA encodes for innumerable possible people, and yet it's you and I who are here - winners in a stupefying lottery. We came at the exact right moment, a blip in the hundred million centuries of the universe: the Earth inhabitable, not yet engulfed by the sun, but not only molten magma, inhospitable to life. The planet cooled and water formed; it was able to hold an atmosphere. And in this place, on this small blue rock, innumerable miracles: redwoods, computers, stingrays, pianos, you and me.”
― Rachel Khong, Real Americans

“Here I am, in lieu of you, collecting the moments.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

“You repeated about how nice the day was, either because you really wanted me to know it or because you'd forgotten you already mentioned it, but all of a sudden, it didn't matter what you remembered or didn't, and the remembering--it occurred to me--was irrelevant. All that mattered was that the day was nice--was what it was.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

“What I want to know is what counted for something and what counted not at all. Now I feel like a shit for spending that time - that's the word it's convention to use: spending - on what turns out not to matter, and neglecting the things that did, and do.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

“You know what else is unfair, about Joel? That I loosened the jar lid, so somebody else could open him up.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

“Life always seemed too short, but now, alone, life seems far too long.”
― Rachel Khong, Real Americans

“Here's the fear: she gave to us, and we took from her, until she disappeared.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

“So I switched my major to art history. In the end, I wasn't the sort of person who yearned to shape a landscape. I wanted only to observe it.”
― Rachel Khong, Real Americans

“A big part of adulthood seemed to be checking email repeatedly.”
― Rachel Khong, Real Americans

“Of course she was interrupting. As people we interrupted one another’s lives—that was what we did. If you sought to live your life without interruption you wound up like me: living life without interruption, totally alone.”
― Rachel Khong, Real Americans