Your problem isn’t that you think too much

“I am merely noting that the creation of native prostitutes to service foreign privates is an inevitable outcome of a war of occupation, one of those nasty little side effects of defending freedom that all the wives, sisters, girlfriends, mothers, pastors, and politicians in Smallville, USA, pretend to ignore behind waxed and buffed walls of teeth as they welcome their soldiers home, ready to treat any unmentionable afflictions with the penicillin of American goodness.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“Your problem isn’t that you think too much; your problem is letting everyone know what you’re thinking.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“Our proper mode in situations where demand was high and supply low was to elbow, jostle, crowd, and hustle, and, if all that failed, to bribe, flatter, exaggerate, and lie. I was uncertain whether these traits were genetic, deeply cultural, or simply a rapid evolutionary development. We had been forced to adapt to ten years of living in a bubble economy pumped up purely by American imports; three decades of on-again, off-again war, including the sawing in half of the country in '54 by foreign magicians and the brief Japanese interregnum of World War II; and the previous century of avuncular French molestation.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“With that, the conversation finally exhausted itself, leaving us to nuzzle our cocktails with the affection one reserved for puppies.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer