Nithya Narayanan

“This house is a thing both ancient and disjointed, and entity of addition and subtraction, a palimpsest of stone and wood and caulk and mud, Its existence here, on the the peninsula, is proof that everything was once something else: nothing goes away.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, Land

“confess that I admired him, even though he was my enemy. It is always better to admire the best among our foes rather than the worst among our friends. Wouldn’t you agree, Commandant?”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“We shared a passion for words, but I preferred the silence of writing while she loved to talk.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Refugees

“The economic interests of the unwanted and the fearful middle class are aligned—but so many can’t see that because of how much they fear the different, the refugee, the immigrant. In its most naked form, this is racism. In a more polite form, it takes the shape of defending one’s culture, where one would rather remain economically poor but ethnically pure.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Refugees