“My chances of returning to America were small, and I thought with regret about all the things I would miss about America: the TV dinner; air-conditioning; a well-regulated traffic system that people actually followed; a relatively low rate of death by gunfire, at least compared with our homeland; the modernist novel; freedom of speech, which, if not as absolute as Americans liked to believe, was still greater in degree than in our homeland; sexual liberation; and, perhaps most of all, that omnipresent American narcotic, optimism, the unending flow of which poured through the American mind continuously, whitewashing the graffiti of despair, rage, hatred, and nihilism scrawled there nightly by the black hoodlums of the unconscious. There were also many things about America with which I was less enchanted, but why be negative?”
Quote by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Book:The Sympathizer
Work
The Sympathizer
Browse quotes and source details for this work. more
Author
You May Also Like
Source: On the Genealogy of Morals
“I say looking on the bright side of life never killed anybody.”
Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before
Source: Watchmen
Source: Change of Heart
Source: Hexwood
“When you’re still too young to shave, optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.”
Source: On writing: a memoir of the craft
Source: The World as Will and Representation, Volume I