quotes by Lê Thi Diem Thúy

"If one morning in the Spring, a stranger came and said to me, Your mother, father, brother, sister, uncle, lover, friend, is dead. From a b-52, napalm bombing, search and destroy mission, air attack, Tet offensive, My Lai massacre, failed escape, I would not scream but make of my body a net, a tarp, stretched taut across the sky, the sea, over every village and hamlet. Prepared to catch everything from the sky, shade everything on the ground, rain water and receive you, war, with arms outstretched."
— Lê Thi Diem Thúy

"When I grow up I am going to be the gangster we are all looking for."
— Lê Thi Diem Thúy (The Gangster We Are All Looking For)

"I go about things in an oblique way. It's like a sidelong glance. This doesn't mean I don't like the sharp stab of directness—only that what I like more are all the moments, leading up to that moment of directness or that expression of rage . . . how long rage was silenced before it exploded and at what cost."
— Lê Thi Diem Thúy