"But what if the mother tongue is stunted? What if that mother tongue is not only the symbol of a void, but is itself a void? What if the tongue is cut out? Can one take pleasure in loss without losing oneself entirely?
The Vietnamese I own is the one you gave me. The one whose diction and syntax reach only the second grade level. As a girl you watched, from a banana grove, your schoolhouse collapse after an American napalm raid. At five you never stepped into a classroom again.
Our mother tongue, then, is no mother at all but an orphan. Our Vietnamese, a time capsule. A mark of where your education ended, ashed. Ma, to speak our mother tongue is to speak only partially in Vietnamese but entirely in war.”
“‘Hey,’ he said, half-asleep, ‘what were you before you met me?’
‘I think I was drowning.’
A pause.
‘And what are you now?’ he whispered, sinking.
I thought for a second. ‘Water.’”
I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time. Of course I don’t when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone.
If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency – what is one to do?
Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love. - The unbelievable lightness of being
“Kaz leaned back. “What’s the easiest way to steal a man’s wallet?”
“Knife to the throat?” asked Inej.
“Gun to the back?” said Jesper.
“Poison in his cup?” suggested Nina.
“You’re all horrible,” said Matthias.”