The Show Opens with a Quotation from Another Nguyen Work
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The first episode of ‘The Sympathizer’ opens with a quote projected on a grainy film camera: ‘All Wars are fought twice. The first time on the battlefield. The second time in memory.’ The quote isn’t attributed to anyone, and you won’t find it in any edition of ‘The Sympathizer,’ but it originates from another Nguyen book, his 2016 nonfiction work ‘Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of the War.’ The book version of ‘The Sympathizer,’ published in 2015, instead opens with a quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche’s ‘On the Genealogy of Morals.’ ‘Let us not become gloomy as soon as we hear the word ‘torture:’ in this particular case there is plenty to offset and mitigate that word — even something to laugh at.’