“Why did someone fall in love with you because you are one thing and then want you to be something else?”

“She had broken, become something else. She didn't know what yet. Could you love someone in the process of changing? She did love Linh. As much as a ghost loved. The mind treacherous.”

“She did not think it was true that women fell in love all at once, but rather, that they fell in love through repitition, just the way someone became brave.”

“Sometimes you have to fulfill a promise in order to deserve the love you're given.”

“Saigon in utter darkness this last night of the war. A gestating monster. Her letter to Linh had been simple: I love you more than life, but I had to see the end.”

“Before, there had been this small, shiny thing inside her that kept her immune from what was happening, and now she knew it had only been her ignorance, and she felt herself falling into a deep, dark place.”

“Saigon was loved precisely because it was so unlovable - its squalor, its biblical, Job-like misfortune, its imminent, hoevering doom.”