Nothing is more Precious than Independence and Freedom

“...nothing is more precious than independence and freedom...”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“Some animals could see in the dark, but it was only humans who deliberately sought out every possible route into the darkness of our own interiors.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“The most important thing to understand is that while we courted, Americans dated, a pragmatic custom whereby a male and a female set a mutually agreeable time to meet, as if to negotiate a potentially profitable business venture. Americans understood dating to be about investments and gains, short or long term , but we saw romance and courtship as being about losses. After all, the only worthwhile courtship involved persuading a woman who could not be persuaded, not a woman already predisposed to examine her calendar for her availability.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“That was when I fell in love with my son, when I understood how insignificant I was, and how marvelous he was, and how one day he’d feel the exact same thing.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“I gradually shrank in size until I was a teenager, then a child, and then, at last, a baby, crawling, until inevitably I was sucked naked and screaming through that portal every man's mother possesses, into a black hole where all light vanished. As that last glimmer faded, it occurred to me that the light at the end of the tunnel seen by people who have died and come back to life was not Heaven. Wasn't it much more plausible that what they saw was not what lay ahead of them but what lay behind? This was the universal memory of the first tunnel we all pass through, the light at its end penetrating our fetal darkness...”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer