I was once foolish enough to believe knowledge would clarify, but some things are so gauzed behind layers of syntax and semantics, behind days and hours, names forgotten, salvaged and shed, that simply knowing the wound exists does nothing to reveal it. #OceanVuong

I guess what I mean is that sometimes I don't know what or who we are. Days I feel like a human being, while other days I feel more like a sound. I touch the world not as myself but as an echo of who I was. Can you hear me yet? Can you read me? #OceanVuong

To be or not to be. That is the question. A question, yes, but not a choice. #OceanVuong

What if the body, at its best, is only a longing for body? #OceanVuong

Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you’ve been ruined. #OceanVuong

Reading “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” in Lover’s park and thinking how beautiful the English language can get in the hands of a poet writing a novel. Heart-wrenching and soul-quenching.

Maybe we look into mirrors not merely to seek beauty, regardless how illusive, but to make sure, despite the facts, that we are still here. That the hunted body we move in has not yet been annihilated, scraped out. #OceanVuong

To see yourself still yourself is a refuge men who have not been denied cannot know. #OceanVuong

Because you remembered and memory is a second chance. #OceanVuong

The good thing about national anthems is that we’re already on our feet, and therefore ready to run. #OceanVuong

They say if you want something bad enough you'll end up making a god out of it. But what if all I ever wanted was my life, Ma? #OceanVuong | On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

I am concerned here not with doing things but merely with knowing them. #Descartes

thriving is in loss / ծաղկումը կորստի մեջ է

Grief, Sir, is a species of idleness. #Herzog #SaulBellow