James Le

“When you leave one country for another, nobody tells you years will bleed together like rain on newsprint. One year becomes five. Five years become ten. Ten years become fifteen.”
― Patricia Engel, Infinite Country

“A man is a member of society first, and an individual second. You must go along with society, whether it chooses destruction or not.”
― Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination

“I had never chosen anything. I had always changed my colors according to my surroundings. Nor had I ever willingly engaged in providing advice on how to evade taxes or gone along with that kind of scheme. I merely went with the flow of the moment. I was thus virtually nonexistent.”
― Tomoyuki Hoshino, ME: A Novel

“The image of a sardine floated across my mind. Through I seemed to be swimming freely in the sea, I was merely moving my body in relation to the other fish around me. There was no sardine leader deciding in which direction we would swim. We merely conformed to the fluctuations of the school, expanding or shrinking, drifting off to the side or surging ahead into the distance. And there was no intentionality behind it. The sardine that strayed would be eaten. Thus, so as not to fall behind, I stayed in constant motion. Behind me. Before me. Above me. Below me. Sardines, sardines, sardines. Eventually I would no longer know which sardine I was or whether I was really there at all.”
― Tomoyuki Hoshino, ME: A Novel