.

“The truest ruins are not written down. The girl Grandma knew back in Go Cong, the one whose sandals were cut from the tires of a burned-out army jeep, who was erased by an air strike three weeks before the war ended--she's a ruin no one can point to. A ruin without location, like a language.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“the thing about beauty is that it’s only beautiful outside of itself.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Your hands are hideous—and I hate everything that made them that way. I hate how they are the wreck and reckoning of a dream.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I remember how your eyes widened. I remember staring and staring at the end of your finger until, at last, an emerald blur ripened into realness. And I saw them. The birds. All of them. How they flourished like fruit as your mouth opened and closed and the words wouldn't stop coloring the trees. I remember forgetting the blood. I remember never looking down.
Yes, there was war. Yes, we came from its epicenter. In that war, a woman gifted herself a new name- Lan- in that naming claimed herself beautiful, then made that beauty into something worth keeping. For that, a daughter was born, and from that daughter, a son.
All this time I told myself we were born from war- bit I was wrong, Ma. We were born from beauty.
Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence- but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous