TAB

“Saigon time was fourteen hours off, although if one judged time by this clock, it was we who were fourteen hours off. Refugee, exile, immigrant--whatever species of displaced human we were, we did not simply live in two cultures, as celebrants of the great American melting pot imagined. Displaced people also lived in two time zones, the here and the there, the present and the past, being as we were reluctant time travelers. But while science fiction imagined time travelers as moving forward or backward in time, this timepiece demonstrated a different chronology. The open secret of the clock, naked for all to see, was that we were only going in circles.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“Remember, you're not half of anything, you're twice of everything.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“Perhaps I did not always love him so well as I do now. But in such cases as these, a good memory is unpardonable.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“She seemed to be able to turn the accent on and off. She tended to turn it on for comforting people, and for threatening to kill them.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower