Connie

“You must claim America, she said. America will not give itself to you. If you do not claim America, if America is not in your heart, America will throw you into a concentration camp or a reservation or a plantation.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“She listened, stunned, to the stupid sentences I said to her.”
― Alejandro Zambra, My Documents

“...while, in vicious arguments that ended with both of them crying, and of the two, it was he who cried the most— he sobbed with rage, with resentment, with shame, and then his face would harden as though the tears had settled like sediment onto his skin; it’s a commonplace analogy really, but after crying, his skin looked denser and darker.”
― Alejandro Zambra, My Documents

“Why were we hungry? my stomach cried. Even then I understood that if the rich could only spare all the hungry a bowl of rice, they would be less rich but they would not starve. If the solution was so simple, why was anyone hungry? Was it only a lack of sympathy?”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer