All my favorite establishments were either overly crowded or pathetically empty. People either sipped fine vintages in celebration or gulped intoxica…

- Monique Truong

In language at once stark and delicate, Suki Kim shatters the polemic of North and South Korea. She couples an investigative reporter's fierce desire…

- Monique Truong

Words, do not have twins in every language. Sometimes they only have distant cousins, and sometimes they pretend that they are not even related.

- Monique Truong

The irony of acquiring a foreign tongue is that I have amassed just enough cheap, serviceable words to fuel my desires and never, never enough lavish…

- Monique Truong

Alcohol, I had learned, was an eloquent if somewhat inaccurate interpreter. I had placed my trust that December night in glass after glass of it, eag…

- Monique Truong

I was certain t find the familiar sting of salt, but what I needed to know was what kind: kitchen, sweat, tears or the sea.

- Monique Truong

Although we strap time to our wrists, stuff it into our pockets, hang it on our walls, a perpetually moving picture for every room of the house, it c…

- Monique Truong