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Ocean Vuong

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

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  • strangenewemberhas quoted3 years ago
    They say nothing lasts forever but they’re just scared it will last longer than they can love it.
  • Darya Bukhtoyarovahas quoted5 years ago
    I have and have had many names. Little Dog was what Lan called me. What made a woman who named herself and her daughter after flowers call her grandson a dog? A woman who watches out for her own, that’s who. As you know, in the village where Lan grew up, a child, often the smallest or weakest of the flock, as I was, is named after the most despicable things: demon, ghost child, pig snout, monkey-born, buffalo head, bastard—little dog being the more tender one. Because evil spirits, roaming the land for healthy, beautiful children, would hear the name of something hideous and ghastly being called in for supper and pass over the house, sparing the child. To love something, then, is to name it after something so worthless it might be left untouched—and alive. A name, thin as air, can also be a shield. A Little Dog shield
  • Fernanda Cisneroshas quoted2 years ago
    To be or not to be. That is the question. A question, yes, but not a choice.
  • forgetenothas quoted2 years ago
    Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey.
  • 302 Rizvi Khadijahas quoted3 years ago
    We try to preserve life—even when we know it has no chance of enduring its body. We feed it, keep it comfortable, bathe it, medicate it, caress it, even sing to it. We tend to these basic functions not because we are brave or selfless but because, like breath, it is the most fundamental act of our species: to sustain the body until time leaves it behind.
  • strangenewemberhas quoted3 years ago
    What Simone Weil said: Perfect joy excludes even the very feeling of joy, for in the soul filled by the object, no corner is left for saying “I.”
  • strangenewemberhas quoted3 years ago
    Mostly, I hate him because he was right.
  • strangenewemberhas quoted3 years ago
    Pain, however, is no story in itself.
  • strangenewemberhas quoted3 years ago
    What were we before we were we?
  • strangenewemberhas quoted3 years ago
    Staring into the mirror, I replicate myself into a future where I might not exist.
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