Derrick Nguyen

“Those kids aren't dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don't get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.”
― James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk

“People say I'm extravagant. I tell them Yes, that's right, and I'm offering this to myself in memory of all my suffering.”
― Dương Thu Hương, Paradise of the Blind

“When I couldn't sleep, I would just stare at those devastated rice fields and weep. Sometimes, I considered suicide. As if by coincidence, I had to walk past the old well at the gate to the temple five or six times a day. The water was so clear. It was as if it were beckoning to me. I would stare at my reflection and tell myself, iI could end my suffering. But it would be too cowardly. They'll just come and laugh on my own grave. I've got to survive. To see their undoing and to win this chess game with heaven.”
― Dương Thu Hương, Paradise of the Blind

“But I know about suffering; if that helps. I know that it ends. I ain't going to tell you no lies, like it always ends for the better. Sometimes it ends for the worse. You can suffer so bad that you can be driven to a place where you can't ever suffer again: and that's worse.”
― James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk