Hà Linh

“White roses and red roses: those were beautiful colours to think of. And the cards for first place and second place and third place were beautiful colours too: pink and cream and lavender. Lavender and cream and pink roses were beautiful to think of. Perhaps a wild rose might be like those colours and he remembered the song about the wild rose blossoms on the little green place. But you could not have a green rose. But perhaps somewhere in the world you could.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“I wonder where the dreams go that I don't remember. I do not know what to do with my hands when they have nothing to do. Even though it's not for me, I turn around when someone whistles in the street. Dangerous animals do not scare me. I have seen lightening. I wish they had slides for grown-ups. I have read more volumes one than volumes two. The date on my birth certificate is wrong. I am not sure I have any influence. I talk to my things when they're sad. I don't know why I write. I prefer a ruin to a monument. I am calm during reunions. I have nothing against New Year's Eve. Fifteen years old is the middle of my life, regardless of when I die. I believe there is an afterlife, but not an afterdeath. I do not ask "do you love me". Only once can I say "I'm dying" without telling a lie. The best day of my life may already be behind me.”
― Édouard Levé, Autoportrait

“An anxiety for being me, forever trapped in myself, floods my whole being without finding a way out, shaping me into tenderness, fear, sorrow and desolation.
An inexplicable surfeit of absurd grief, a sorrow so lonely, so bereft, so metaphysically mine...”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“People under seventy and over seven are very unreliable if they are not cats.”
― Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet