Violet Kupersmith > Quotes

“In fact, she rather liked it, and found that their mutual lack of language skills freed them from the banalities of conversation.”
― Violet Kupersmith, The Frangipani Hotel: Stories

“It was past noon and the alley was deserted, overbright and shadow-less. She had just woken up from a nap. Long was at work. The dog was in a rectangular cage, its snout muzzled. It had been deposited on the curb in front of the restaurant, destined to be eaten in one of the seven ways advertised on the sign. It was a small, skeletal thing, with jutting hip bones Winnie could make out all the way from the balcony, but it was so filthy that she couldn't tell what color it was supposed to be.
And as she watched, the animal lifted its head and locked eyes with Winnie, and Winnie had to hold on to the railing to steady herself because there was such raw anger in those eyes that her whole body shuddered in response. In that moment Winnie felt something strangely akin to envy. There was something wild and unquenchable even in a cage, in the last hours before it became someone's dinner that the dog possessed, which Winnie had never figured out how to cultivate correctly inside herself. She did not pity the dog; she pitied herself, and this was why she knew she had to free it.”
― Violet Kupersmith, Build Your House Around My Body

“For one insane, brief moment, Mia imagined that Tuan was somehow able to see into her mind, her heart, and that his horror had been in response to seeing all the ugliness that was there beneath the skin, gnawing a hole somewhere deep and vital inside her.”
― Violet Kupersmith, The Frangipani Hotel

“Tan was a man of greater ambitions. He had saved up enough of his airport bribes to always lose when he played cards with his captains and major, but he made sure to demonstrate enough skill that they felt pleased with themselves when they won.”
― Violet Kupersmith, Build Your House Around My Body

“Alla luce del sole si sentì meglio. Abbandonò una mano sul tronco filamentoso dell’albero. La corteccia era liscia. Era uno di quei fichi strangolatori che impiegano duecento anni a intrecciare i loro corpi attorno all’albero ospite, uccidendolo mentre ne assumono la forma. Un parassita, un doppelgänger, un sarcofago. Winnie lo ammirava. Ciò che desiderava, rifletté come in sogno, ora con tutta la schiena poggiata contro l’albero, era che accadesse la stessa cosa. Che la nuova se stessa che aveva sperato di diventare a Saigon - una se stessa migliore, baniano resiliente e impenetrabile - rivestisse la Vecchia Winnie in una gabbia di radici di lattice e la lasciasse appassire all’interno”
― Violet Kupersmith, Build Your House Around My Body

“I love her but I don't have to have her. I just have to be near her. And that's enough.”
― Violet Kupersmith, Build Your House Around My Body

“They were both taken by surprise when the tiny orange flame sparked to life and they could suddenly see each other again. They stared at each other - Field Rat Ma's eyes wide and too round, black pupils surrounded by whites surrounded by dark circles from lack of sleep, and the Fortune Teller's eyes almost indiscernible from the wrinkles they were buried in.”
― Violet Kupersmith, Build Your House Around My Body

“They had discovered that excitement is really just smog and noise and never seeing the stars, and trash piled up in the streets. They would ride with their heads out the window, their faces softening as the city fell away and the world turned flat and emerald-colored again; they were waiting for the moment when we crossed into their province, when they would smack the dashboard and cry out, “Here! Here!”
― Violet Kupersmith, The Frangipani Hotel: Stories

“[She knew that] what she felt for him was not love, it was closer to it than she deserved.”
― Violet Kupersmith, Build Your House Around My Body

“Bé Lì—“bad girl”—wasn’t even really a nickname. It was what Binh had always been, and so it was what she had always been called.”
― Violet Kupersmith, Build Your House Around My Body

“The were both taken by surprise when the tiny orange flame sparked to life and they could suddenly see each other again. They stared at each other - Field Rat Ma's eyes wide and too round, black pupils surrounded by whites surrounded by dark circles from lack of sleep, and the Fortune Teller's eyes almost indiscernible from the wrinkles they were buried in.”
― Violet Kupersmith

“Winnie felt better in the sunlight. She let her hand rest on the tree's ropy trunk. The bark was smooth beneath her fingers. These were the breed of strangling ficus that spent two hundred years braiding their bodies around a host tree, killing it while gradually assuming its form. Parasite, doppelgänger, sarcophagus. Winnie admired it. What she wished, she reflected dreamily, her whole back now leaning against the tree, was for the same thing to happen to her. For the new self she'd hoped she would become in Saigon a better self, a banyan self, resilient and impenetrable to encase Old Winnie completely in its cage-like lattice of roots and then let her wither away inside. She wanted there to be no trace left of that thirteen-year-old girl that Dr. Sang had remembered.”
― Violet Kupersmith, Build Your House Around My Body

“On good nights, Winnie managed to glean five nonconsecutive hours of a shallow and unsatisfying slumber. But those nights were
rare. Usually, Winnie was wide awake between midnight and dawn and
passed the time by staring at the street below the apartment. Her room did not have its own balcony, just one window outfitted with a cage-like lattice designed to keep out burglars. When the afternoon sun came through at the right angle it created shadowy tessellations on her bed, and Winnie would lie down and position herself so that the scales of light would be cast onto her own skin. After dark, she climbed up and perched motionless on the sill for hours with her legs poking out through the bars, until her lower half went numb. She liked the feeling of having nothing beneath her feet while she was three stories high. It allowed her to pretend for a moment that she was no longer a girl, just a hovering, discorporate displacement of night sky. Safely concealed by the treetops, she could clock the nocturnal comings and goings of the trash collectors and grilled-squid carts and irresponsible, drunk revelers driving home from bars, occasionally wobbling off the road and crashing into a utility pole.”
― Violet Kupersmith

“He did not have to have him. He just had to be near him. It was enough.”
― Violet Kupersmith, Build Your House Around My Body

“She could now feel comfortably invisible in the group, because everybody was enjoying themselves too much to notice her at their periphery. Winnie was just an extra clicking-glass sound, another blurry face in the background to support their intoxicated narrative of a good time.”
― Violet Kupersmith, Build Your House Around My Body