Ocean Vuong Quotes

#1. what becomes of the shepherd / when the sheep are cannibals?

Ocean Vuong

#2. The most beautiful part of your body
is where it's headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world.

Ocean Vuong

#3. When our lips touched the day closed
into a coffin. In the museum of the heart...

Ocean Vuong

#4. Confetti
green, how I want you green.
Green despite the red despite
the rest.

Ocean Vuong

#5. How sweet. That rain. How something that lives only to fall can be nothing but sweet.

Ocean Vuong

#6. Sometimes I ask for too much just to feel my mouth overflow.

Ocean Vuong

#7. Dear God, if you are a season, let it be the one I passed through
to get here.

Here. That's all I wanted to be.

I promise.

Ocean Vuong

#8. Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets. Like how the spine
won't remember its wings
no matter how many times our knees
kiss the pavement. Ocean,
are you listening? The most beautiful part
of your body is wherever
your mother's shadow falls.

Ocean Vuong

#9. Language excites me. Irrational thought excites me. I spend most of my time listening instead of writing. A shard of language might come: a phrase, a word, an anagram, and I'd just keep it in my pocket, like a little seed, warming in my fist.

Ocean Vuong

#10. Don't we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The

Ocean Vuong

#11. When they ask you where you're from, tell them your name was fleshed from the toothless mouth of a war-woman. That you were not born but crawled, headfirst - into the hunger of dogs. My son, tell them the body is a blade that sharpens by cutting.

Ocean Vuong

#12. I didn't know the cost
of entering a song - was to lose
your way back.

Ocean Vuong