“The history of Vietnam lies in this bowl, for it is in Hanoi, the Vietnamese heart, that phở was born, a combination of the rice noodles that predominated after a thousand years of Chinese occupation and the taste for beef the Vietnamese acquired under the French, who turned their cows away from ploughs and into bifteck and pot-au-feu. The name of their national soup is pronounced like this French word for fire...”

“In Vietnamese, the word for water and the word for a nation, a country and a homeland are one and the same: nu’o'c.”

“After five years of military occupation, the French population of Illinois was exhausted and bewildered.”

“Though my skull is the size of a soup bowl, everything in the universe—and more—can fit inside my imagination. And guess what? My imagination tastes like chicken noodle soup.”

“Her name was a joke, she said, like Karen Cutter's family nick-naming her Cookie, or poor Marie Antoinette Jones, whose parents had liked the sound of the name but who were a tad weak in French history.”

“I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor.”