Nghi Vo > Quotes

“Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“You will never remember the great if you do not remember the small.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“When you love a thing too much, it is a special kind of pain to show it to others and to see that it is lacking.”
― Nghi Vo, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain

“The abbey at Singing Hills would say that if a record cannot be perfect, it should at least be present. Better for it to exist than for it to be perfect and only in your mind.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“She had a foreigner’s beauty, like a language we do not know how to read.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“The night before her wedding, Daisy taught me that after the world ended, you still had to get up in the morning, and the things that you ruined would still be there, needing to be fixed. When I looked at famous Jay Gatsby, soul gone and some terrible engine he called love driving him now, I could see that for him, the world was always ending. For him, it was all a wreck and a ruin, and he had no idea why the rest of us weren't screaming.”
― Nghi Vo, The Chosen and the Beautiful

“I am yours, and so I will be your light and your laughter. I am yours, so open your eyes to look at me, and open your mouth so that I may kiss it. I am yours, I am yours, and nevermore will I leave.”
― Nghi Vo, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain

“Submission but only to the truth.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Let him kill himself,” I said finally. “As long as he is dead, that is all that matters to me.” That’s something I think peasants understand better than nobles. For them, the way down matters, whether you are skewered by a dozen guardsmen or thrown in a silk sack to drown or allowed to remove your robe and walk down to the shores of the lake before you gut yourself. Peasants understand that dead is dead.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Being close to her was like being warmed by a bonfire, and I had been cold for a long time.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Look to your records, cleric. Honor is a light that brings trouble. Shadows are safer by far.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Strange how some trash survives, but precious things are lost, isn’t it?”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“She killed, for she was angry, and she did not eat what she killed, for she was heartsick.”
― Nghi Vo, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain

“And so you came to my house on the soft pads of a midwinter kitten, the whisper of your black tresses sweeping your heels, and so you came to my heart just as quietly. Why, then, did you make such a terrible noise when you let go of my hand and departed, a great trumpeting of horns, a great beating of drums?”
― Nghi Vo, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain

“There are women who will forgive a great deal for a moment of kindness from a handsome man, but Daisy and the other older girls who had taken me under their wings had taught me not to be one of them.”
― Nghi Vo, The Chosen and the Beautiful

“Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves. I am not worried for her in the least.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“Those who bear children hold the keys to life and death, and their ill wishes are to be feared.”
― Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune

“When I looked at famous Jay Gatsby, soul gone and some terrible engine he called love driving him now, I could see that for him, the world was always ending. For him, it was all a wreck and a ruin, and he had no idea why the rest of us weren’t screaming.”
― Nghi Vo, The Chosen and the Beautiful

“It was after midnight with that tired charm that all parties on the downturn acquire.”
― Nghi Vo, The Chosen and the Beautiful

“He wanted something agreeable, something sweeter around the edges, but I was never very good at sweet.”
― Nghi Vo, The Chosen and the Beautiful

“Yes,” I sighed. Sometimes, the only excuse for doing something stupid is knowing that you are doing it and being willing to accept the consequences.”
― Nghi Vo, The Chosen and the Beautiful

“She was known to be kind, which you should never confuse with being gracious or beautiful or courteous.”
― Nghi Vo, Into the Riverlands

“He called me careless because he didn't have the words to sort out how jealous he was of my money and my freedom and how very few people in the world could act as I did.”
― Nghi Vo, The Chosen and the Beautiful

“What's so great about being seen?" Tara demanded. "What's so important about that?"

She might have had the words for it, but I didn't. They locked up in my throat, about being invisible, about being alien and foreign and strange even in the place where I was born, and about the immortality that wove through my parents' lives but ultimately would fail them. Their immortality belonged to other people, and I hated that.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“You must have been happy."
She puffed a soft breath between her lips, shrugged. "I was free. That's better than happy. Happy came later. Are you?"
"I will be," I said firmly. "Both.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“Men had no idea how careless the women of their set weren't allowed to be.”
― Nghi Vo, The Chosen and the Beautiful

“The wind came into the house from the Sound, and it blew Daisy and me around her East Egg mansion like puffs of dandelion seeds, like foam, like a pair of young women in white dresses who had no cares to weigh them down.”
― Nghi Vo, The Chosen and the Beautiful

“Always will my soul reach for yours.”
― Nghi Vo, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain

“I will share every meal that I ever have with you. I will let you eat first from every dish and drink first from every cup.”
― Nghi Vo, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain

“Aunt Justine once gave me some advice when I was newly come to New York. If I was going to be passing anything more than time in public with a man, I should always find out what happened when he heard no, whether it was from me, a taxi driver, a waiter, or his employer. “You may decide what to do after that,” she said, “but most times, your course of action will be clear.”
― Nghi Vo, The Chosen and the Beautiful