Quotes by South Korean Authors - Page 7

As for women who were pretty, intelligent, strikingly sensual, the daughters of rich families—they would only have served to disrupt my carefully ordered existence
Han Kang
Casey glanced at her plate again, recalling the posters of her elementary school lunchroom: YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT. So, how much you ate indicated the quantity of your desire. Walter was also implying that how quickly you got your food revealed the likelihood of achieving your goals. She was in fact terribly hungry, but she'd pretended to be otherwise to be ladylike and had moved away from the table to be agreeable, and now she'd continue to be hungry" (Free Food For Millionaires, p.92.)
Min Jin Lee
Clothing was magic. Casey believed this. She would never admit this to her classmates in any of her women's studies courses, but she felt that an article of clothing could change a person... Each skirt, blouse, necklace, or humble shoe said something - certain pieces screamed, and others whispered seductively, but no matter, she experienced each item's expression keenly, and she loved this world. every article suggested an image, a life, a kind of woman, and Casey felt drawn to them." (Free Food For Millionaires, p.41).
Min Jin Lee
Judge a man by what he tried, not by what he accomplished.
Min Kim
Economics is a political argument. It is not – and can never be – a science; there are no objective truths in economics that can be established independently of political, and frequently moral, judgements. Therefore, when faced with an economic argument, you must ask the age-old question ‘Cui bono?’ (Who benefits?), first made famous by the Roman statesman and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero.
Ha-Joon Chang
All I wanted was for you to be free from everything. And with that freedom, you often showed me another world, so I wanted you to be even freer. I wanted you to be so free that you would live your life for other people.
Kyung-Sook Shin
If your dream is alive, then one day it will come true.
Seohyun
I'm going to go where my heart takes me, even if it's a messy road.
Ha Myung-hee (writer)
People hate what they know and fear what they don't.
Min Kim
Books were cities I'd never visited, filled with pillars of great thoughts and streets of phrases, mazes of abstruse sentence structures and alleys of complicated syllables. They were stores that displayed a wide range of things, punctuation twinkling like the crest of a venerable family, sentences breathing peacefully, words whispering.
Jung-Myung Lee
Novels are food for the leftover hours of life, the in-between times, the moments of waiting.
Young-Ha Kim
Recognizing that the boundaries of the market are ambiguous and cannot be determined in an objective way lets us realize that economics is not a science like physics or chemistry, but a political exercise... If the boundaries of what you are studying cannot be scientifically determined, what you are doing is not a science.
Ha-Joon Chang
Say you want to live life like a movie.Keep in mind there’s a running time.
Tablo
Recognizing that the boundaries of the market are ambiguous and cannot be determined in an objective way lets us realize that economics is not a science like physics or chemistry, but a political exercise... If the boundaries of what you are studying cannot be scientifically determined, what you are doing is not a science.
Ha-Joon Chang
Say you want to live life like a movie.Keep in mind there’s a running time.
Tablo
Above a certain level of income, the relative value of material consumption vis-a-vis leisure time is diminished, so earning a higher income at the cost of working longer hours may reduce the quality of your life. More importantly, the fact that the citizens of a country work longer than others in comparable countries does not necessarily mean that they like working longer hours. They may be compelled to work long hours, even if they actually want to take longer holidays.
Ha-Joon Chang
Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only things that are left behind when all else is abraded. The world darkens, like electric bulbs going out one by one. I am aware that I am not a safe person.
Han Kang
If you listen to everybody, you will be nobody.
Min Kim
Your life can be different, Young Ju. Study and be strong. In America, women have choices.
An Na
There is no such thing as a perfect person in this world. We all must become the main characters or the stars of our lives. We are all different and start differently. But from whatever is our circumstances, it is very important that we find the opportunities to try out what we want to do.
Goo Hye Sun
In the past, I used to think that it is fundamental and natural to have everything. But I realized that is not true. Instead I realized that those are things to be grateful for. After that realization, I became comfortable. Even if I don’t have it I am grateful. Such a realization also made me understand that is a way to love myself.
Goo Hye Sun
Suffering is the noblest art, the quieter the better.
Chang-rae Lee
Yes, of course. If you love anyone, you cannot help but share his suffering. If we love our Lord, not just admire him or fear him or want things from him, we must recognize his feelings; he must be in anguish over our sins. We must understand this anguish. The Lord suffers with us. He suffers like us. It is a consolation to know this. To know that we are not in fact alone in our suffering.
Min Jin Lee
HOUSE Grow high. The devil can't find you. Grow deep. Buddha can't find you. Build a house and live there. Gourd creepers will climb over it, their flowers dazzling at midnight.
Ko Un
Women who have been disappeared by violence are howling. The voices of disappeared women are echoing. I sing with these voices.
Kim Hyesoon
Be the winner in your life!
Tae Yun Kim
But, Aunt... I don't want to go to the grave site set aside for me a few years ago at the ancestral grave site. I don't want to go there. When I lived here and woke up from the fog in my head, I would walk by myself to the grave site set aside for me, so that I could feel comfortable if I lived there after death. It was sunny, and I liked the pine tree that stood bent but tall, but remaining a member of this family even in death would be too much and too hard. To try to change my mind, I would sing and pull weeds, sitting there until the sun set, but nothing made me feel comfortable there. I lived with this family for over fifty years; please let me go now.
Kyung-Sook Shin
When I lived here and woke up from the fog in my head, I would walk by myself to the grave site set aside for me, so that I could feel comfortable if I lived there after death.
Kyung-Sook Shin
His Presbyterian minster father had believed in a divine design, and Mozasu believed that life was like this game where the player could adjust the dials yet also expect the uncertainty of factors he couldn't control. He understood why his customers wanted to play something that looked fixed but which also left room for randomness and hope.
Min Jin Lee
The issue of false consciousness is a genuinely difficult problem that has no definite solution. We should not approve of an unequal and brutal society because surveys show that people are happy. But who has the right to tell those oppressed women or starving landless peasants that they shouldn’t be happy, if they think they are? Does anyone have the right to make those people feel miserable by telling them the ‘truth’? There are no easy answers to these questions, but they definitely tell us that we cannot rely on ‘subjective’ happiness surveys to decide how well people are doing.
Ha-Joon Chang
People say that a dog can sense the longing of a person, so perhaps he's barking in response to your heart.
Kim Dong Hwa
The truth, finally, is who can tell it.
Chang-rae Lee
When you recognize or experience the truth about yourself you automatically feel love, because love is a quality of your true consciousness and true ideas.
Tae Yun Kim
Our actions are guaranteed to affect others. Because we are not alone in this world, much of our learning about ourselves comes from our interaction with others. Our relationships are our teachers. We learn from each other.
Tae Yun Kim