After his sisters were taken away, the Japanese occupying force sent my grandfather to Imperial Schools. My first language is Japanese, he tells me. English far away. Sometimes, right after he told me, I would look at him and wonder what it felt like, to have the print of your enemy all the way inside you, right into the way you shaped your thoughts. Alexander Chee
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More Quotes By Alexander Chee
  1. You ought to know, you were my best friend. You were. I know you loved me. I loved you. <span style="margin:15px; display:block"></span>No one should have gone through what we went through, but we did. And it kills me to think of it. But I didn't...

  2. The secret to being a rider in the hippodrome wasn't just that you must be agile, or that you must be good with horses, or that you must be strong and steady as the horse careens to the far end of the arena and back...

  3. Every now and then, you find a book that feels like it was keyed to your DNA.

  4. Sappho isn't really meant to be read. It's meant to be sung and there were dances for the songs, also. Sappho was a performance artist, and now she exists as a textual project. She was saved by her critics, and by people who wrote of...

  5. You are never lost in sorrow, it seems to me, ever. You do know the way. In fact, you don't think there's any other. Sorrow seemed to me to be more like a road would through life, through the days of your life, like the...

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