# The Sympathizer  ## Metadata - Author: [[Viet Thanh Nguyen]] - Full Title: The Sympathizer - Category: #books ## Highlights - my way of seeing the world still seemed more of a virtue than a danger, which is how some dangers first appear. ([Location 141](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=141)) - (Nothing, the General muttered, is ever so expensive as what is offered for free.) ([Location 180](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=180)) - he was a sincere man who believed in everything he said, even if it was a lie, which makes him not so different from most. ([Location 462](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=462)) - It is always better to admire the best among our foes rather than the worst among our friends. ([Location 594](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=594)) - Tags: [[orange]] - one of those nasty little side effects of defending freedom that all the wives, sisters, girlfriends, mothers, pastors, and politicians in Smallville, USA, pretend to ignore behind waxed and buffed walls of teeth as they welcome their soldiers home, ready to treat any unmentionable afflictions with the penicillin of American goodness. ([Location 687](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=687)) - Tags: [[orange]] - soldiers, with their usual wit, called a thousand-star hotel. All I need do was look up to the galaxy to remind myself of my good luck. ([Location 719](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=719)) - Tags: [[orange]] - since we were dependent on Chinese markets our food had an unacceptably Chinese tinge, another blow in the gauntlet of our humiliation that left us with the sweet-and-sour taste of unreliable memories, just correct enough to evoke the past, just wrong enough to remind us that the past was forever gone, missing along with the proper variety, subtlety, and complexity of our universal solvent, fish sauce. Oh, fish sauce! How we missed it, ([Location 1158](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=1158)) - Tags: [[orange]] - So it was that we soaped ourselves in sadness and we rinsed ourselves with hope, and for all that we believed almost every rumor we heard, almost all of us refused to believe that our nation was dead. ([Location 1185](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=1185)) - Tags: [[orange]] - First, since the song was top secret information, meant only for the Americans and their allies, everyone in the city also knew what to listen for. ([Location 1380](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=1380)) - Our society had been a kleptocracy of the highest order, the government doing its best to steal from the Americans, the average man doing his best to steal from the government, the worst of us doing our best to steal from each other. ([Location 1425](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=1425)) - Like a shark who must keep swimming to live, a politician—which was what the General had become—had to keep his lips constantly moving. ([Location 1443](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=1443)) - Tags: [[orange]] - Vietnam Muon Nam! ([Location 1877](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=1877)) - It was, instead, the best kind of truth, the one that meant at least two things. ([Location 1896](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=1896)) - Tags: [[pink]] - I dreamed of trying to pull a mask off my face, only to realize that the mask was my face. ([Location 2132](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=2132)) - Tags: [[pink]] - Look at the voting system. Same concept. We had multiple parties and candidates and look at the mess we had. Here you choose the left hand or the right and that’s more than enough. Two choices and look at all the drama with every presidential election. Even two choices may be one too many. One choice is enough, and no choice may be even better. Less is more, ([Location 2135](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=2135)) - Tags: [[pink]] - One must be grateful for one’s education no matter how it arrives. ([Location 2193](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=2193)) - Tags: [[pink]] - The paper with which the West wiped itself was softer than the paper with which the rest of the world blew its nose, ([Location 2335](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=2335)) - Tags: [[pink]] ## New highlights added November 12, 2023 at 7:14 AM - amnesia was as American as apple pie, and it was much preferred by Americans over both humble pie and the fraught foods of foreign intruders. ([Location 2974](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=2974)) - Tags: [[pink]] - Displaced people also lived in two time zones, the here and the there, the present and the past, being as we were reluctant time travelers. ([Location 3037](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=3037)) - Tags: [[pink]] - But while science fiction imagined time travelers as moving forward or backward in time, this timepiece demonstrated a different chronology. The open secret of the clock, naked for all to see, was that we were only going in circles. ([Location 3038](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=3038)) - Tags: [[pink]] - when the doctor examining you for mandatory military service (an exam that you never fail, unless you are afflicted by wealth) ([Location 3042](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=3042)) - Tags: [[pink]] - nothing was more American than wielding a gun and committing oneself to die for freedom and independence, unless it was wielding that gun to take away someone else’s freedom and independence. ([Location 3313](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=3313)) - Tags: [[orange]] - I’m dying because this world I’m living in isn’t worth dying for! If something is worth dying for, then you’ve got a reason to live. ([Location 3406](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=3406)) - Tags: [[orange]] - If youth was not wasted, how could it be youth? ([Location 3523](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=3523)) - Tags: [[orange]] - Christian ideas being so important to the American people that they had granted them a place on the most precious document of all, the dollar bill. IN GOD WE TRUST must even now be printed on the money in their wallets. ([Location 3736](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=3736)) - Tags: [[orange]] - Americans saw unhappiness as a moral failure and thought crime. ([Location 3843](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=3843)) - Tags: [[orange]] - Presumably, Dr. Hedd said, you are not unhappy because you are pursuing happiness and have not yet captured it. ([Location 3848](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=3848)) - Tags: [[orange]] - Americans on the average do not trust intellectuals, but they are cowed by power and stunned by celebrity. ([Location 3849](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=3849)) - Tags: [[orange]] - happiness, American style, is a zero-sum game, ([Location 3855](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=3855)) - Tags: [[orange]] - only the pursuit of happiness is promised to all Americans, unhappiness is guaranteed for many. ([Location 3859](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=3859)) - Tags: [[orange]] - Some animals could see in the dark, but it was only humans who deliberately sought out every possible route into the darkness of our own interiors. ([Location 4516](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=4516)) - Tags: [[pink]] - A. There are so many ways. Q. What is one example? ([Location 5213](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=5213)) - I developed a growing sympathy for the man in these pages, the intelligence operative of doubtful intelligence. Was he a fool or too smart for his own good? Had he chosen the right side or the wrong side of history? And were not these the questions we should all ask ourselves? Or was it only me and myself who should be so concerned? ([Location 5581](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=5581)) - What do those who struggle against power do when they seize power? What does the revolutionary do when the revolution triumphs? Why do those who call for independence and freedom take away the independence and freedom of others? And is it sane or insane to believe, as so many around us apparently do, in nothing? ([Location 5705](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00PSSG4MM&location=5705))