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Quote by Ocean Vuong

“The boys had this way of knowing what the other was thinking without ever using words. "Because it's like that when you're fourteen," he said. The superpower of being young is that you're closest to being nothing - which is also the same as being very old.”

Quote by Ocean Vuong

Work

The Emperor of Gladness

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Ocean Vuong

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“The boy wasn't beautiful. Not even handsome in this gentle, dusky light. It was only that they were the same age, and that they worked there, shoulder touching through the steaming, aching hours, passing cigarettes back and forth in this lot, the filter's taste changing: slick and slightly sweeter from the blue Gatorade Russia sipped through his shift. Can camaraderie - the bond of working in unison - be eno0ught to make you want to put your mouth to a kid with a busted face, to find him somehow more complete despite his unrecognizable beauty, the smell of his armpits seeping through his work polo, that garlicky, vinegary scent of humanness canceling the drugstore deodorant he wore to hide it? Yes, Hai realized now - it was.”

“The Last Love’s Dance In the tender weave of adulting, friendships softly fade. To part from you is not pride’s cold decree Your absence carves a canyon in my fragile heart’s terrain. Yet, I choose to release you, though my soul aches, no throne of pride, For self-care demands this quiet, piercing break. My waning love, a tender gift, I offer to those who hold me near, Who mend my festering wounds with care. My last tears, like rivers etched from the shattered dreams of youth, Will fall with those who weep within my sorrow’s embrace.”

“Ray follows the instruction, telling me to wait right there. Alone, the worry I had perhaps been holding at bay for months bursts through. It's like a fully formed thing, a shadow version of me, the voice my own, asking, what will you do if you don't get into music school? What will you do if it doesn't work out and you're left behind, left alone? How could you believe it could? What will happen to you and Del if you're separated? What will happen to you if there's no music, no rhythm to your days? I'm in danger of becoming untethered, the fear swelling in me. I fear I might float up, up, away, but Ray returns, his reappearance pulling me gently back down to the ground. He hands me a plateful of barbecue food, and we eat where we stand.”

“A night-long easterly and a chestnut tree side-swiping the power lines has stilled the house to this: wells of darkness in the hallway, doors opening onto mine shafts of night and us, sitting by firelight, tipping heels of whisky against the flames and the dust. An evening of unfamiliar obstacles, rooms shrunken to the candle's halo, the world lessened. You speak from the shore of the other chair, saying all you really want is to live long enough to be good at the oboe and remembering a fly I saw that morning, vibrating across a window like a tatooist's needle towards the slip of space that was air not glass, I think I understand. That it is after all the small victories that matter, that are in the end, enough.”