Never Fall Down Quotes
"In my town, music is like air, always there."
"Tonight I study the crowd, find a lady—fat one, fat like milk fruit—and slowly, slowly, very sneaky, my brother and I, we hide behind her skirt, hold on so light she doesn’t know, and pretend she’s our mom."
"I worry about those two in China. The Chinese eat bad-smelling food. Where they gonna eat? How they gonna get home with all this fighting?"
"Sometime, I steal coconuts. Sometime, the lady next door, she let me pick the flower to sell. And sometime I play a game for money."
"No other little kid has money like me. This mean I can buy things for my family."
"We shoot probably a hundred bullet, die a hundred time. Then we hear a whistle, and the sky far away flash white."
"I let her say that it’s low class what I’m doing."
"I grab my little brother hand and run and run till we get to a little pond near our house. We jump in, water up to our nose, and hide there. Where nothing bad can find us."
"But one soldier at the market, high-ranking guy, he brag about the government fighters."
"You eat some, your mouth wrinkle up inside, and you want some more."
"With this diarrhea, you feel like you have to shit a hundred times each night."
"Night is when I get most hungry, so I sneak out and try maybe to catch frog or cricket."
"All these Khmer Rouge song are fast song, fast and happy-sounding, and all about the Revolution."
"Now that you learn the songs, they gonna kill me."
"I think of the old man, and I play for him in my mind, scared, but also in that moment, proud."
"You show fear, you die. You show nothing, maybe you live."
"To live with nothing in your stomach and a gun in your face, is that living or is that dying a little bit every day?"
"No boy can fall in love with a girl. No girl can fall in love with a boy. Only thing you can love is Angka."
"All this Khmer Rouge talk of forgetting, always I think I can disobey, always I keep my family alive in my mind."
"We hear this three time every day. Even the killing on a schedule."
"We play fast, no stopping, to cover the sound of the killing, but you hear it anyhow. Sickening sound. Skull cracking."
"He smile like he crazy, his mouth green like grass."
"Sometime I practice music with my eyes closed. I go away then, like to heaven, it’s so quiet. In that moment I escape."
"Always, with a kind voice, they say to each other, comrade this, comrade that. One day you are comrade. The next day corpse."
"I hear them in my head. I hear them all the time."
"So this dead guy, this guy on top of me, he save me."
"The Khmer Rouge, they kill whatever they hate."
"You don’t know? Mek says. 'Sombo in trouble himself. He bring water to some guy at the manure pile, some guy still loyal to the old leader.'"
"One Khmer Rouge is good, I think. One guy, this Sombo, he is good inside."
"I think: why I stayed alive? Only so I can die today?"
"You not living. And you not dead. You living dead."
"Don’t be too brave, Arn, she says. 'You hide from the bullet so I can see you again. Okay?'"
"Now I know you are still living, I will live, too."
"Now the jungle, it slide sideway, then tip up in the air, and the tree all upside down, very crazy, very funny; and I feel, finally, happy and also sleepy and very good, warm, finally no chill, and my face is touching something warm, something soft, and I think: okay, Arn, now you can rest."
"Because every minute I have to think about surviving. Every minute."
"I don’t know exact what this mean, but one more time I’m lucky."
"And now all this happiness, all this magic, now it disappear; and my heart now turn heavy, like stone, like boulder."
"I fall asleep planning how I can get famous in the United State, bring these kid with me; and in a dream, all the kid they put the hand on me, push me down, down in the ground, and now I’m lying under big pile, can’t move, can’t get up, big weight on top of me: hundred thousand corpse."
"Small flower is blooming now. Little cup, yellow, with tiny drop of water in it throat. All over the place. Cover the field, the rice paddy, the hill."
"I am volleyball king now in this camp. Jumping so high, like frog, I fly higher even than the net."
"I already know what it feels to have real enemy."
"New word I learn now: see Judy run. Run, Judy, run."
"This morning, I’m monkey; this afternoon, hero."
"Everything coming out of me, everything from Cambodia leaving me now."
"No rice in America? No one tell us this before we leave Cambodia."
"Inside my heart, a bad feeling grow. Like tiger growling, like a big anger."
"And all the people clap. They applause us for a very long time, and I have this feeling deep in me that I like this sound. Very much."
"You don’t know what I can do. Before, I shoot guys like you."
"All the time you fighting, you think only of how to survive. All the time you survive, you wonder why you don’t die. But now my life can be something different. Now, in America, I don’t have to fight. I don’t have to survive. I can chose a new thing: to live."