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Quote by Viet Thanh Nguyen

“When was the last time an American president found it worth his while to write a speech on the importance of art and literature? I cannot recall. And yet at Yan’an, Mao said that art and literature were crucial to revolution. Conversely, he warned, art and literature could also be tools of domination. Art could not be separated from politics, and politics needed art in order to reach the people where they lived, through entertaining them.”

Quote by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Book:The Sympathizer
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The Sympathizer

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Viet Thanh Nguyen

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“He who can command, he who is a ‘master’ by nature, he who is forceful in deed and gesture – what has he to do with contracts! Such beings violate our every assumption: they come unexpectedly, without cause, reason, notice, excuse; they appear as suddenly as lightning, and are too terrible, too sudden, too convincing, too ‘different’ even to be hated. Their work is the instinctive creation and imposition of forms; of all artists, their work is the most instinctive, unconscious – in connection with appearance there arises something new, a system of governance which is alive , in which the functions and parts are defined and related to one another, in which above all no part finds a place unless it has some ‘function’ in connection with the whole. These instinctive organizers, they know nothing of guilt, responsibility, consideration; they are subject to that terrible artist-egoism which gleams like brass, and which sees itself justified to all eternity, in its work, even as a mother sees in her child.”

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Book:On the Genealogy of Morals
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“I love art almost as much as I love books. It’s hard to explain the way I feel when I see a beautiful painting. It’s a combination of scared, happy, excited, and sad all at once, like a soft light that glows in my chest and stomach for a few seconds. Sometimes it takes my breath away, which I didn’t know was a real thing until I stood in front of this painting. I used to think it was just some saying in pop songs about stupid people in love. I had a similar feeling when I read an Emily Dickinson poem. I was too excited and threw my book across the room. It was so good that it made me angry. People would think I'm nuts if I try to explain it to them, so I don't.”

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Book:I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
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