Top 90 Nghi Vo Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “What’s your name?” I asked her after making a study of her face for a half dozen years. There was a cragginess to her features, her strong nose and her sharp jaw. It would crash ships rather than launch them, but I never knew a woman who didn’t want to crash at least a few ships.”

— Nghi Vo

52. “Chih thought that even from the crowd, they would see in her face the trace of a migratory bird, a rabbit, and the empress from the north, fierce enough to fight wolves.”

— Nghi Vo

53. “The wind came into the house from the Sound, and it blew Daisy and me around her East Egg mansion like puffs of dandelion seeds, like foam, like a pair of young women in white dresses who had no cares to weigh them down.”

— Nghi Vo

54. “She would love him, and more than she had thought she would, but that was the way of loving most things. You couldn’t portion love out in spoons or cups or slices. You could only let it grow and nurture it if you could, cut it down if you had to.”

— Nghi Vo

55. “You can only praise a mammoth when you are alone with her and no one else can hear.”

— Nghi Vo

56. “He liked being shocked by the extravagances of the city, but he was not ready for the people that came with the wonder, who lived shoulder to shoulder with wonder and thus grew immune to it.”

— Nghi Vo

57. “I wasn’t really interested in making a go of it with anyone, no matter what Tom and Daisy were pushing, but part of that disinterest came from the place of a rather arrogant person realizing that she couldn’t. There was nothing as uninteresting as something I couldn’t have.”

— Nghi Vo

58. “I sit in the moon-viewing pavilion, the hem of my sleeves wet from tears, and I cannot see for the grief has stolen my eyes, and I cannot speak for the grief has stolen my tongue.”

— Nghi Vo

59. “The problem of course was that anyone who tells other people stories first must tell themselves stories.”

— Nghi Vo

60. “No one likes a prodigy, after all.”

— Nghi Vo

61. “The world starts with a story. So do dynasties and eras and wars. So does love, and so does revenge. Everything starts with a story.”

— Nghi Vo

62. “As the sun grew ripe and started to stop towards the horizon, Scholar Dieu read the poem, and as she did, it came to Ho Thi Thao how very beautiful she was. She has been beautiful in bed for three days, which was important, and she was beautiful now, when she was angry at having her way blocked. It came to Ho Thi Thao that perhaps she wanted to learn how else the scholar was beautiful, and even in what ways the scholar might be ugly, which could also be fascinating and beloved.”

— Nghi Vo

63. “You are so slow the Huan River could run backwards and the emperor could give the realm to the rule of the people and they could breed a wise horse and an honest lawyer before you landed a blow.”

— Nghi Vo

64. “Vitrine would have shouted curses at him again, but their eyes locked, and suddenly she no longer needed the words. A piece of herself, some dark and deadly and spiteful piece, flew from her and into his eyes, making her a part of him, and for a second time in as many seconds, he flinched in shock. His face was bloody, and her curse would live inside for as long as he would last, which was to say, she would live inside him forever.”

— Nghi Vo

65. “No one loves a city like one born to it, and no one loves a city like an immigrant. No one loves a city like they do when they are young, and no one loves a city like they do when they are old. The people loved the city of Azril in more ways than could be counted. Vitrine loved her city like demons and cats may love things, with an eye towards ownership and the threat of small mayhem.”

— Nghi Vo

66. “Always will my soul reach for yours.”

— Nghi Vo

67. “Women disappear, and even if you are famous, it can happen without a sound, without a ripple.”

— Nghi Vo

68. “Let him kill himself,” I said finally. “As long as he is dead, that is all that matters to me.” That’s something I think peasants understand better than nobles. For them, the way down matters, whether you are skewered by a dozen guardsmen or thrown in a silk sack to drown or allowed to remove your robe and walk down to the shores of the lake before you gut yourself. Peasants understand that dead is dead.”

— Nghi Vo

69. “When I explained it to her, she went silent and turned her face to the wall, still as the sky before a lightning strike.”

— Nghi Vo

70. “Because it is not such a good story for humans if they get randomly eaten and do not deserve it,” said Sinh Loan, somewhat to Chih’s surprise. “I suppose they mostly tell this story to humans after all.”

— Nghi Vo

71. “The sky went a flat aluminum gray with sullen purple highlights, a warning of danger.”

— Nghi Vo

72. “Anger could start a thing, but it took endurance and forbearance and patience to finish it.”

— Nghi Vo

73. “You will never remember the great if you do not remember the small.”

— Nghi Vo

74. “The world is built on who carries what and for who.”

— Nghi Vo

75. “We followed his arm to where Anna Farnsworth languished beneath the ghostly lights, the illumination giving her a flickering phosphor tint. She had just appeared in The Girl on the Strand, utterly scandalous. It was common tat around New York that an old wizard had made her from a whole garden’s worth of peonies. He should have made her out of something more sturdy, because she was looking wilted under the August heat.”

— Nghi Vo

76. “They were the heralds of the dawn, when things awakened and were made new, and they came at the end. It occurred to Vitrine that they did not have experience with what came after the end, when everything was over and ruined.”

— Nghi Vo

77. “Look to your records, cleric. Honor is a light that brings trouble. Shadows are safer by far.”

— Nghi Vo

78. “I already knew that being brave didn’t mean anything unless you were willing to do it again.”

— Nghi Vo

79. “See, this combination means that you will be successful in your career, but only if you remember to take things in their own time. No one likes a prodigy, after all. Patience should be your watchword.”

— Nghi Vo

80. “Back in Louisville, that high wet smell coupled with the uncomfortable prickling heat meant that a twister was on the way, crossing the flat cropland with a destructive fury that was out to ruin lives. We were in the East, however, and we had other ways to ruin our lives.”

— Nghi Vo

81. “If she had her way, all libraries would be arranged like this, promiscuous, free to mingle, and truth found everywhere and nowhere at all.”

— Nghi Vo

82. “Down among the ashes, their faces and hands turned gray and grimy with the refuse of New York, I could see the men who lived and worked in the ash. It was their lot to shovel the ash that came in. It was a titanic struggle that I imagined they could only cope with by realizing that they were after an impossible goal and therefore were free to ignore it.”

— Nghi Vo

83. “Some of those girls had babies inside them, and others had broken hearts or broken heads, but they fed the Mississippi all the same, and I had no interest in being one of them.”

— Nghi Vo

84. “The world is built on who carries what and for who,” Chih said, settling the weight more comfortably on their shoulders. “It’s not a bad world where we carry presents for people who feed us.”

— Nghi Vo

85. “I will share every meal that I ever have with you. I will let you eat first from every dish and drink first from every cup.”

— Nghi Vo

86. “She was clever and determined. I could see it in her tigers, in the life she had built so far away from everything either of us had ever known. I needed a silver screen to give me a dream, but she had painted her own out of nothing at all.”

— Nghi Vo

87. “You learn, eventually, that pride and anger will not really keep you from what you truly want to do.”

— Nghi Vo

88. “It was common tat around New York that an old wizard had made her from a whole garden’s worth of peonies. He should have made her out of something more sturdy, because she was looking wilted under the August heat.”

— Nghi Vo

89. “I wanted what Clarissa Montgomery had, the ability to take those looks, to bend them and to make them hers, to make the moment hers, to make the whole world hers if she wanted. I wanted that, and that want was the core of everything that came after.”

— Nghi Vo

90. “Be a little kind to yourself, please. If you can be whoever you want, wouldn’t it be nice to be someone you liked?”

— Nghi Vo

91. “Being close to her was like being warmed by a bonfire, and I had been cold for a long time.”

— Nghi Vo

92. “I would never be adorable and bubbling over with praise for myself and others. Instead, I was still and cold, and had to hope that was enough.”

— Nghi Vo

93. “The barber paused, flicking water droplets from his razor with a brisk snap of his wrist. “Well, I once shaved Governor Liu of Qin Province during the processional, and last summer, I stepped in to thread Crimson Bow’s brows when her own barber was ill.”

— Nghi Vo