Dalena Tran

“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

“You would tell them that the most useful thing one can do with empty hands is hold on.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“That's what I wanted—not merely the body, desirable as it was, but its will to grow into the very world that rejects its hunger.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“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