Travis Perkins

“He’d told them what Saturday night meant. The mattress, the plastic sheet. He told them of Matador in the fifth. He said he loved her from the very first time she’d talked to him, and it was his fault, it was all his fault. Clay melted, but didn’t break, because he deserved no tears or sympathy. ‘The night before she fell,’ he said, ‘we met there, we were naked there, and –’ He stopped because Catherine Novac – in a shift of gingerblondness – had stood and she’d walked towards him. She lifted him gently out of his chair and hugged him hard, so hard, and she patted his short flat hair, and it was so damn nice it hurt. She said, ‘You came to us, you came, you came.”
― Markus Zusak, Bridge of Clay

“I pitied the French for their naïveté in believing they had to visit a country in order to exploit it. Hollywood was much more efficient, imagining the countries it wanted to exploit.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“If something is worth dying for, then you’ve got a reason to live.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“You know how Americans deal with it? They pretend they are eternally innocent no matter how many times they lose their innocence. The problem is that those who insist on their innocence believe anything they do is just. At least we who believe in our own guilt know what dark things we can do.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer