Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Ocean Vuong

Quote by Ocean Vuong

Work

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Ocean Vuong

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Ocean Vuong. more

You May Also Like

“Tonio had disappeared again into the kitchen—I heard him banging around some dishes. He had this habit of making a huge dish once or twice a week, then freezing it and eating the same thing for every meal until it was gone. Except for breakfasts, which were usually composed of a cappuccino and heaping spoonfuls of Nutella on saltine crackers. As someone who had a lot of feelings about food, I found it a fairly scandalizing arrangement, but I figured it would be just as upsetting if witnessed by the average person.”

FamilyMafiaOlive OilNutellaAnd We All Bled Oil
Book:And We All Bled Oil
Create image

“She did like books and reading, but sometimes she just wanted to talk to her mom. She listened, though, because her mother never failed to find the exact-right perfect book, and she read it in a way that made you want to listen forever. As always, her mother was right. There was a book for everything. Somewhere in the vast Library of the Universe, as Natalie thought of it, her mom could find a book that embodied exactly the things Natalie was worrying about. And sure enough, Maya Running, about a girl from India whose family didn't fit in, did make her feel better. Like she wasn't the only kid in the world with a different kind of family. You're never alone when you're reading a book, Mom liked to say.”

DifferentFamilyNot AloneMother Daughter RelationshipBackgroundBook Knowledge
Book:The Lost and Found Bookshop
Create image

“Friends and relatives encouraged me to erect a gravestone for my father. I thought that even though I was not a high official, I would erect for my father a tombstone grander than any of those others. Then I recalled that in 1958, many of the village's tombstones had been dismantled for use in irrigation projects or as bases for smelting ovens in the steelmaking campaign during the Great Leap Forward; some had been laid out on roadways. The more impressive the monument, the greater the likelihood of it being demolished. My father's tombstone had to be erected not on the ground, but in my heart. A tombstone in the heart could never be demolished or trampled underfoot.”

LoveDeathFatherLossGriefFamilyCommunismStarvationFamineTombstone
Book:Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962
Create image

“There's this whole theory that younger siblings are spoiled. That we're enfeebled from all the mollycoddling. Soft. That by the time it was our turn to rebel, our parents had already given up. I disagree with this wholly. It's first-born who can't take no for an answer. Younger kids have iron constitutions. Hardy hides from lifetimes of rejection. A hundred million entreaties for their older siblings to hang out answered by shoves, eye rolls, slammed doors, and stone-cold ditches followed by peals of laughter.”

FamilyFamily RelationshipsSiblings
Book:Yolk
Create image