Stuart

“You know how Americans deal with it? They pretend they are eternally innocent no matter how many times they lose their innocence. The problem is that those who insist on their innocence believe anything they do is just. At least we who believe in our own guilt know what dark things we can do.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“Isn't that what education is all about? Getting the student to sincerely say what the teacher wants to hear? Keep that in mind.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“Movies were America’s way of softening up the rest of the world, Hollywood relentlessly assaulting the mental defenses of audiences with the hit, the smash, the spectacle, the blockbuster, and, yes, even the box office bomb. It mattered not what story these audiences watched. The point was that it was the American story they watched and loved, up until the day that they themselves might be bombed by the planes they had seen in American movies.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“All of us who are living are dying. The only ones not dying are the dead.,,To live was to be haunted by the inevitability of one's own decay, and to be dead was to be haunted by the memory of living.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer