Pol Artola

“The typical American preferred the canned version of philosophy found in how-to manuals, but even average Frenchmen and Vietnamese cherished a love of knowledge.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Committed

“Besides my conscience, my liver was the most abused part of my body.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“Like literature, music can overwhelm you with sudden emotion, can move you to absolute sorrow or ecstasy; like literature, painting has the power to astonish, and to make you see the world through fresh eyes. But only literature can put you in touch with another human spirit, as a whole, with all its weaknesses and grandeurs, its limitations, its pettinesses, its obsessions, its beliefs; with whatever it finds moving, interesting, exciting, or repugnant.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Submission

“What reeducation had taught me was that dedicated communists were like dedicated capitalists, incapable of nuance.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Committed