Lhoss

“At the age of fourteen his face was no longer that of a child. The change is sometimes thought of as a coarsening process; this misses the point. The change—which may occur any time between fourteen and twenty-four—involves a simultaneous gain and loss in expressiveness. The texture of the skin, the form of the flesh over the bones, become mute; their appearance becomes a covering, whereas in childhood it is a declaration of being. (Compare our response to children and to adults: we give to the existence of children the value we give to the intentions of adults.) However, the openings in the covering—especially the eyes and mouth—become more expressive, precisely because they now offer indications of what lies hidden behind.”
― John Berger, G.

“In there, in the only rooms in this city that we in truth can share, your body becomes more like mine. And as you know, mine marks me, announces my weakness, displays it as yellow skin. It flagrantly tells my story, or a compacted, distorted version of it, to passersby curious enough to cast their eyes my way. It stunts their creativity, dictates to them the limited list of who I could be. Foreigner, asiatique, and, this being Mother France, I must be Indochinese. They do not care to discern any further, ignoring the question of whether I hail from Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos. Indochina, indeed. We all belong to the same owner, the same Monsieur and Madame. That must explain the failure to distinguish, the lapse in curiosity. To them, my body offers an exacting, predetermined life story. It cripples their imagination as it does mine. It tells them, they believe, all that they need to know about my past and, of lesser import, about the life that I now live within their present.”
― Monique Truong, The Book of Salt

“Language is a house with a host of doors, and I am too often uninvited and without the keys. But when I infiltrate their words, take a stab at their meanings, I create the trapdoors that will allow me in when the night outside is too cold and dark.”
― Monique Truong, The Book of Salt

“To walk by without blinking an eye is to say to each other that we are human, whole, a man or a woman like any other, two lungfuls of air, a heart pumping blood, a stomach hungry for home-cooked food, a body in constant search for the warmth of the sun. Before I came to the rue de Fleurus, GertrudeStein, the only way I knew how to hold onto that moment of dispensation, that without-blinking-an-eye exchange, to keep it warm in my hands, was by threading silver through them. Blood makes me a man. No one can take that away from me, I thought. But as you know, GertrudeStein, in order for me to stay at the rue de Fleurus, I have had to give up the habit that has sustained me.”
― Monique Truong, The Book of Salt