Dalena Tran

“For the first time back then, I thought about everything seriously. The past and the future, both equally unknowable, and also this ongoing situation that the consulates call "transitory" but that we know in everyday language as "the present.”
― Anna Seghers, Transit

“Too much joy, I swear, is lost in our desparation to keep it.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence—but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I was seen—I who had seldom been seen by anyone. I who was taught, by you, to be invisible in order to be safe.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous