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The Best We Could Do QUOTES

The Best We Could Do QUOTES

1 " Má leaves me but I'm not alone, and a terrifying thought creeps into my head. Family is now something I have created and not just something I was born into. "

― Thi Bui , The Best We Could Do

2 " Proximity and closeness are not the same. "

― Thi Bui , The Best We Could Do

3 " How much of ME is my own and how much is stamped into my blood and bone, predestined? "

― Thi Bui , The Best We Could Do

4 " That first week of parenting was the hardest week of my life, and the only time I ever felt called upon to be HEROIC. "

― Thi Bui , The Best We Could Do

5 " This - not any particular piece of Vietnamese culture - is my inheritance: the inexplicable need and extraordinary ability to run when the shit hits the fan. My refugee reflex. "

― Thi Bui , The Best We Could Do

6 " I remember being excited about seeing snow for the very first time. "

― Thi Bui , The Best We Could Do

7 " Every casualty in war is someone's grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, brother, sister, child, lover. "

― Thi Bui , The Best We Could Do

8 " To understand how my father became the way he was, I had to learn what happened to him as a little boy. It took a long time to learn the right questions to ask. "

― Thi Bui , The Best We Could Do

9 " Maybe being their child simply means that I will always feel the weight of their past. "

― Thi Bui , The Best We Could Do

10 " But maybe being their child simply means that I will always feel the weight of their past. Nothing that happened makes me special. But my life is a gift that is too great - a debt I can never repay. "

― Thi Bui , The Best We Could Do

11 " In the dark apartment in San Diego, I grew up with the terrified boy who became my father. "

― Thi Bui , The Best We Could Do

12 " Have our parents ever looked at us and felt slightly… disappointed? Such high hopes, so much possibility, to fall short. And though my parents took us far away from the site of their grief… certain shadows stretched far, casting a gray stillness over our childhood… hinting at a darkness we did not understand but could always FEEL. "

― Thi Bui , The Best We Could Do