Night Sky with Exit Wounds Quotes

“& remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“How sweet. That rain. How something that lives only to fall can be nothing but sweet.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“The most beautiful part of your body
is where it’s headed.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“& so what–if my feathers
are burning. I
never asked for flight.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“Some nights you are the lighthouse / some nights the sea / what this means is that I don't know / desire other than the need / to be shattered & rebuilt”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“Stars. Or rather, the drains of heaven – waiting. Little holes. Little centuries opening just enough for us to slip through.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“If you must know anything, know that the hardest task is to live only once.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“I didn't know the cost
of entering a song - was to lose
your way back.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“Dear God, if you are a season, let it be the one I passed through
to get here.

Here. That's all I wanted to be.

I promise.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“Maybe we pray on our knees because god only listens when we’re this close to the devil.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“My mother said I could be anything I wanted - but I chose to live.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“Sometimes I ask for too much just to feel my mouth overflow.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets. Like how the spine
won't remember its wings
no matter how many times our knees
kiss the pavement. Ocean,
are you listening? The most beautiful part
of your body is wherever
your mother's shadow falls.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“Don't we touch each other just to prove we're still here?”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“When they ask you where you’re from, tell them your name was fleshed from the toothless mouth of a war-woman. That you were not born but crawled, headfirst— into the hunger of dogs. My son, tell them the body is a blade that sharpens by cutting.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“As if my finger, / tracing your collarbone / behind closed doors, / was enough / to erase myself.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“Stupid boy,
You can get lost in every book
but you can never forget yourself
the way god forgets
his hands.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“You will always remember what you were doing when it hurts the most.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“Everyone can forget us—as long as you remember.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“use it to prove how the stars were always what we knew they were: the exit wounds of every misfired word”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“Gravity breaking our kneecaps just to show us the sky.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“...teach me
how to hold a man the way thirst
holds water. Let every river envy
our mouths. Let every kiss hit the body
like a season. Where apples thunder
the earth with red hooves...”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“If you must know anything, know that you were born because no one else was coming.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“He laughs despite knowing he has ruined every beautiful thing just to prove beauty cannot change him.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“what becomes of the shepherd / when the sheep are cannibals?”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“Tell me it was for the hunger
& nothing less. For hunger is to give
the body what it knows

it cannot keep. That this amber light
whittled down by another war
is all that pins my hand to your chest.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“I met a man tonight.... maybe I shouldn't have, but he had the hands of someone I used to know. Someone I was used to.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“When our lips touched the day closed
into a coffin. In the museum of the heart...”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“I don’t know / desire other than the need / to be shattered & rebuilt”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“If we ever make it to shore, he says, I will name our son after this water. I will learn to love a monster”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds