Kwon Quotes

I promise it’ll all be worth it. Every splendid, euphoric and magical moment of it will be worth it.

Do you realize that our whole lives, every decision we’ve made, all the roads we’ve chosen—good, bad, big and small—everything has led us to this very moment in time?

Do you believe in magic?" -R,Annarasumanara

Cause that's the thing about boomerangs, right? They come back even if they feel they shouldn't, they come back even if the world tries to stop them, they come back because they ultimately know where they belong...and who they belong to.

No one said finding Paris would be easy; I only said it would be worth it.

I'm not telling you to always do whatever you want. I'm saying you should do just as many things you want to do as things you don't want to do. That's what life's about.

I advise you not to mess with me. I know Karate, kung Fu, judo tae kwon do, jujitsu, and 100 other dangerous words.

You'll tell me what it feels, right? When you find Paris?

What's your one wish tonight?

I’m a black belt in judo, black belt in jujitsu and shotokan, and hold a third dan black belt in tae kwon do.

Well, I started Tae Kwon Do pretty early before moving into Muay Thai—” “What’s that?” “Muay Thai? It’s this Thai kickboxing style where you use your whole body to put force into kicks and strikes.” “Oh, like the way I eat pizza.

I'll give you the moon and the stars, Princess... and maybe a city to go along with it.

Your love will never conquer what this society raised them to be.

Will you take me into a world filled with timeless magic?

Intact families sat in the blue wash of television light, tranquil, like drowned statues.

On our last mission - our "final exam" - we were airlifted to a remote region, and we parachuted directly into a hostile enclave. We had to subdue the enemy using hand-to-hand tactics like tae kwon do and pugil sticks, cut their hair in styles appropriate to their particular face shapes, and give them perms.

Mom perched on the edge of our sofa, her forehead etched with a line of concern I'd grown to know well. It was the same one she'd flashed at me when I pointed to the twisty slide, the same one she'd pulled out when I'd taken up Tae Kwon Do in third grade, and the same one that had frozen on her features all through driver's ed last spring. It was her SMother face.

A lumpy mass of American stereotypes was metastasizing inside me. It made me cringe when I heard Mr. Miyagi say "Wax on, wax off, Daniel San." It made me pretend to laugh when I saw Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles. It made me sign up for tae kwon do that year because that was what Asians did. It would be decades before I diagnosed the lump of alienation, dual consciousness, and self-hatred, but it was already growing quickly, bilious and caustic. I only saw myself as the piece that did not fit in the puzzle.

Tell me, Choi Yoori...are your lips as soft as they look?

You can call me Boss though, seeing as though you're only the assistant.

With no filter, he said, "I thought it would have been softer. It was kinda salty...

A Black Belt should be... ...a REFLECTION of what IS inside ...NOT the PROOF of it!

I believe that we, in the attempt to live, invented Him. But if I could, I'd ask Him to give you everything.

After that experience, I immediately enrolled Julie in tae kwon do class, despite her protests. I wanted to be sure that if she were ever attacked, her instincts would take over, and that her instincts would kick ass.

My Illusionist, will you take me into a world filled with timeless magic?

Phoebe, you’re a capable girl, but I’m afraid being alone isn’t a skill. It’s a disposition.

I ate pain. I swilled tears. If I could take enough in, I'd have no space left to fit my own.

At the end of hardship comes happiness.

Masculinity was a glass vase perpetually at the edge of the table.

You have to become the 'first of yourself' instead of trying to become the second of anyone.

By the time I quit, I realized I’d rather have no talent than just enough to know how much I lacked.

I have to pick up Mulder from tae kwon do,” she says. Yes, her son is named after David Duchovny’s character from The X-Files.

By the way, Tae Kwon Do does NOT clear up ‘obnoxiousness’.

Tae kwon do required focus, strength, and endurance, but mostly it required the ability to deal with looking like an ass in public.

But once you’ve learned the nasty, street-fighting, no-holds-barred art of Max Kwon Do, you never really forget

but don’t you let him trick you into a fight in school. He’s, like, a black belt in Tae Kwon Do or something.

People with no experience of God tend to think that leaving the faith would be a liberation, a flight from guilt, rules, but what I couldn't forget was the joy I'd known, loving Him.

I still can't help but wonder, do our lives truly hold no meaning? Even if you try desperately to find it, to contrive some kind of meaning, is it true that what's not there isn't there? Does life leave only misery behind? Could the fact that we're alive—the fact that we're in this life where joy and terror and peace and danger mingle—couldn't that itself be the meaning of life?

I’ve got a black belt in tae kwon do.” When she lowered into a fighting stance, Callen could only wonder. “I took it all through college.” “And I have a mighty and fatally accurate bitch slap,” Jessica added.

Death carves a clear line between the dead and the living,' she said in a solemn tone. 'The dead are over there and the rest of us are over here. When someone dies, no matter how great they were, it's like drawing a permanent line between that person and the rest of humanity. If birth means begging to join the side of the living, then death has the power to kick everyone out. That's why I think death, with its power to sever things forever, is far more objective, more dignified, than birth, which is the starting point of everything.

all she wants is to be loved totally, without reason or question or sacrifice. Love is her hands above her head. Love is a riding crop, a whip, a knotted red rope—all things that force her to relinquish the control with which she tightly grips the world.

I’ll be back!

apart from restitution, divine forgiveness is illusory, for restitution authenticates our repentance for theft.

Do I always have to get something out of everything? Can't I just do it even if I get nothing out of it?

Kink proves that our desires, no matter how dark they are deemed, are always worthy of being named.” —BRONTEZ PURNELL, author of 100 Boyfriends

You can’t get enough of a thing you don’t need.

You can't get enough of something you don't need.

She did not watch pornography; she thought about stopping him as soon as the sex became boring to her.

It seems to me that you are less interested in actually being vulnerable with others and more enamored with the symptoms of your own vulnerability, he wrote.

Sasha wants me to take her somewhere--a place she has no vocabulary for--a place neither of us has been.

the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.

I’ve wondered if I’ve stopped being able to want, but maybe it’s just that what I most wish to have again is not, at this point, available.

Maybe he was right about you. You are damaged.” Her mouth had dropped open in shock—that he could hit her so low and so hard by quoting Charlie Kwon, her childhood molester. Stevens had turned and left, the door of her little house slamming hard behind him. She looked at the bare finger again, regret pulling down her mouth. He hadn’t deserved how she’d ended it. She was damaged.

She knows that a small, soft animal lives inside her, and that animal wants to be loved completely, flat on its back, kissed and cuddled. She wants that [...] - LARISSA PHAM, AUTHOR OF "Trust

They were like two-thirds of a bar joke: he was an ex-Pentecostal, she was an ex-Catholic, and though she'd been with him for three years, she still refused to let him in the bathroom if she was so much as taking a piss.

This was the thing about being an ex-Christian: like that, your life expectancy went from eternity to seventy-odd years. A death sentence on you and on those you loved. He tried not to think about it; he thought about it all the time.

In a disembodied floating space, S/m offers little pockets of theatricality and connection. So long as they are playing, two people are totally accountable and listening to each other. S/m radically preempts romantic love because it is a practice of it.

Worse yet, he blundered from the start, asking her why she felt she needed to be hurt. “Why are people gay?” she shot back, suddenly unshy. “Why does anyone have a foot fetish? One of my earlier memories is of looking up words related to—to this, in the dictionary. It just happens, you know?

I decided to join Svetlana’s tae kwon do class. First we ran around in circles barefoot. I had forgotten about my ankles and feet. The studio had a glass wall overlooking the pool, where a scuba lesson was in session. How did all those people know that they wanted to know how to scuba dive? A boy with a green belt stood with me in a corner and demonstrated the first “form”: a series of dancelike motions that supposedly defended you against some theoretical assailant. I didn’t understand how a dance like that could defend you, unless the attacker also knew the dance, but in that case why would he be using it to attack you?

In Life magazine in 1963, James Baldwin said, “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.

Most men would only see bodily fluids when they caught their ejaculate in their hands, or if their life ended at the wrong end of a brawl. but for women, gore was a unit of measurement: monthly cycles, the egg-white slip of arousal, the blood of virginity stolen through force of hand or the force of law, childbirth, fists splitting the skin of the skull, the leak of milk, tears.

You were forced to eat healthy vegetables, you hated carrots! That, I remember well. You gave them to the guinea pigs secretly.

I couldn’t forget you even if I wanted to.

Hadn’t Han Manu, with an iron in one hand and a crutch wedged under his other arm, been more alive than anyone in this world, more alive than the cancer cells that had spread to his lungs? Hadn’t my sister Hae-on—as she sat with her feet on the sofa or car seat, her knees spread with not a thought in her head, with absolutely no clue as to the inappropriateness of her actions—been warm and exquisitely alive, just like a bird about to take flight? Couldn’t each moment we’re living now be the meaning of life?

Hadn’t Han Manu, with an iron in one hand and a crutch wedged under his other arm, been more alive than anyone in this world, more alive than the cancer cells that had spread to his lungs? Hadn’t my sister Hae-on—as she sat with her feet on the sofa or car seat, her knees spread with not a thought in her head, with absolutely no clue as to the inappropriateness of her actions—been warm and exquisitely alive, just like a bird about to take flight? Couldn’t each moment we’re living now be the meaning of life?

I watched the protest pass, sick with longing. Such a lot of people who still believed they were picked to be God’s children.

But when she became hungry, everything changed. She became incapable of empathy, of putting herself in someone else’s shoes, and hardly considered another person or the smallest etiquette. In these situations, I had no choice but to wait until she filled her stomach. She seemed like an animal then, or even worse a sociopath, someone who could easily take a piece of bread from a starving child or elderly person. But once satiated, she emerged like an enlightened saint.

the call of reparations is not merely for a check to be written or for a debt to be repaid but for a world to be repaired.

If you don't meet their standards, you become a loser.

Kevin nodded. “Absolutely!” “So, I guess you’re the new King of Karate,” Jackson said.  Kevin smiled and pointed to Grand Master Kwon who was walking in front of them, “Nah, he’s the King of Karate, we are just princes.”  Kevin and Jackson grinned at each other and laughed.  Then Kevin went to celebrate

I did the Twelve Sun Salutations from the hatha yoga, rolled the last Sun Salute into a slow tae kwon do pattern, then a faster pattern mixed with Tiger and Crane poses, and a third, even faster, sprinkled with Wing Chun forms. I drove

She considers it, sitting next to him, who is with her but soon will be leaving, though she doesn’t know it, how little time they have left. She considers her own instincts,

And he knows now that he cannot turn back. That he is responsible for this, for her, for making her think that she could trust him, that she could open her heart to him. And he realizes now that he has not stopped to consider, at any moment, the shape of his own heart, if it is a flower or a lock or a door, and if it is a door if that door is closed or open.

This is what he has wanted, isn’t it? To force the quiet, tight bud to blossom. He has done it with peonies before, cut too soon in the season. He sees it now, the flower opening inside her. The hard, pale green outer shell unfurls to reveal a series of delicate petals, thin as tissue, all different shades of pink, the edges frilled. All of the layers opening, turning back to reveal more and more delicacy of all colors, densely packed, the edges of the petals like little curling tongues.

In contrast to the Western reliance on drugs and verbal therapies, other traditions from around the world rely on mindfulness, movement, rhythms, and action. Yoga in India, tai chi and qigong in China, and rhythmical drumming throughout Africa are just a few examples. The cultures of Japan and the Korean peninsula have spawned martial arts, which focus on the cultivation of purposeful movement and being centered in the present, abilities that are damaged in traumatized individuals. Aikido, judo, tae kwon do, kendo, and jujitsu, as well as capoeira from Brazil, are examples. These techniques all involve physical movement, breathing, and meditation.

Charlotte McKenzie was present. No longer saddled with her fake role as a diplo, she was wearing black slacks, a dark blouse and a supple leather jacket. She was still grandmotherly—but she was a grandmother who might practice tae kwon do and enjoy white-water rafting, if not big-game hunting.

I hesitated. She hadn't mentioned a religious upbringing; I knew I'd alluded to mine. I'd joked about it, I was sure. When I was Christian, I said, at times, playing my life's pivotal loss as a joke. Now, I told Phoebe that I'd attended a Bible College before Edwards. Up until I stopped believing in God, I said. I thought I was chosen by Christ. Hand-picked to preach his word. Don't laugh, but I used to peddle salvation outside of town bars, hoping to catch drunks when they'd be extra sentimental. IT worked, too. I was good at it. In the back of my Bible. I listed all the souls I saved.

Do you mind if I ask what made you stop believing? It was nothing special, I said. The usual host of reasons. Like what? Oh, the existence of multiple religions, children starving. The problem of evil- it's how people talk about going bankrupt, right? It's gradual, then it happens all at once.

It must have been so hard, though, she said, expanding. She intended to sympathize, I could tell, and it was true: I'd tried not to leave the faith. I'd had such purpose, living in single-minded pursuit of the God I loved, until the afternoon I knelt in my bedroom, asking one last time for a sign. White gauze curtains rippled. I waited, but I heard nothing else. Muscles stiff, I got up. I should, I think, have told Phoebe how cut open I felt since then, with a God-shaped hole I didn't know how to fill. If I was sick of Christ, it was because I hadn't been able to stop loving Him, this made-up ghost I still grieves as though He'd been real.

한대만 때려봐도 되나요 냉전 중 3명의 X와 함께한 위대한 전사 웅

The fact that she’s a girl requires, I believe, extra effort. Dada may have, at various times in his life, been a pig, but Dada surely does not want to ever look like a pig again. This can’t possibly be overstated. As the first of two boys, I can’t even imagine what it must be like for a little girl to see her dad leering at another of her sex. This creature will soon grow up to be a young woman and that’s something I consider every day. I figure, I’m going to spoil the shit out of this kid for a while, then pack her off to tae kwon do as soon as she’s four years old. Her first day of second grade and Little Timmy at the desk behind her tries to pull her hair? He’s getting an elbow to the thorax. My little girl may grow up with lots of problems: spoiled; with unrealistic expectations of the world; cultural identification confusion, perhaps (a product of much traveling in her early years); considering the food she’s exposed to, she shall surely have a jaded palate; and an aged and possibly infirm dad by the time she’s sixteen. But she ain’t gonna have any problems with self-esteem. Whatever else, she’s never going to look for validation from some predatory asshole. She can—and surely will—hang out with tons of assholes.

Have I mentioned that I grew up working in my much older brother’s dojo?” “Dojo?” Kerry repeated. “As in karate? Judo?” “Tae kwon do,” Maddy said. She shot a knowing grin Kerry’s way. “Ah,” Kerry said, understanding dawning. “And what color would your belt be, jongyeonghaneun yeosong?” Maddy laughed. “I don’t know if I’m an honorable woman,” she said, surprising Kerry by understanding her very rough Korean. “But my belt, it is black.” Maddy sketched a quick martial arts bow, making both women laugh. They glanced toward the back of the bar at the same time, only to find a grinning Hardy looking their way. “See? He’s the guy who assumes women are always talking about him,” Kerry said. “Well, we are,” Maddy replied. “He can’t know we’re discussing how best to dismantle his manhood if he so much as thinks about laying a finger on me.” She said all this with a serene smile. Hardy lifted his beer in a salute, presumably to Maddy, before downing the rest in a single gulp, as if beer consumption somehow proved his manly man prowess. “Poor Hardy,” Kerry said with a mock sigh. “But then, he never did seem big on wanting to have children. Just ask his ex-wife.” She ducked her chin as both women shared another laugh before continuing with their work. After that, the rest of the night didn’t seem all that arduous. Maddy was happy to return Kerry’s wingman favor, and between the two of them, they managed to distract, deflect, or defend much of the ribbing being thrown Kerry’s way and actually had a much better time doing it than Kerry would have imagined.

Tae Kwon Do is a wonderful example of the Japanese concept, Kaizen, which I believe is a foundational practice for success in any and every aspect of life. Kaizen is the idea that small incremental improvements add up over time to yield big results. It’s simple, it’s powerful, and it works.

Kwon Tae-jin, a specialist on North Korean agriculture at the Korea Rural Economic Institute, which is funded by the South Korean government, told me in Seoul. In the far north, where food supplies are historically lean and farmers are regarded as politically hostile, the military takes a quarter of total grain production, Kwon

Tell me, Choi Yoori...are your lips as soft as they look?

Pike stood again, and once more faced the crowd. “I qualified as a scout/sniper and served in Force Recon, mostly on long-range reconnaissance teams, hunter/killer teams, and priority target missions. I’m black belt qualified in tae kwon do, kung fu, wing chun, judo, and ubawazi. I like to run and work out. I like to read.

My name's Soonyoung. Call me Soon.

I’m going to Master Kwon’s first,” Win said. Master Kwon was their tae kwon do instructor. Both of them were black belts—Myron a second degree, Win a sixth degree, one of the highest ranking Caucasians in the world. Win was the best martial artist Myron had ever seen. He studied several different arts including Brazilian jujitsu, animal kung fu, and Jeet Kun Do. Win the Contradiction. See Win and you think pampered, preppy pantywaist; in reality, he was a devastating fighter. See Win and you think normal, well-adjusted human being; in reality, he was anything but.

I want to live on a planet that can hold us. I believe we can all still help it, us, do so. If nothing else, why not try? Why not hope, and then act as if? This is our one wild, lone home; what other choice do we have? R.O. Kwon

The crescent kick is one of the most difficult kicks to master in Tae Kwon Do, but when executed properly, it is one of the most dangerous.  Detective Sergeant Jamie Johansson had been practising it for nearly six years, and despite being only five-foot-six, she could comfortably slam her heel into the ear of someone that was over six feet. And now she had it down to a science. She knew she couldn’t do enough damage with a punch to put someone down if she had to, but a well-executed crescent kick would do the job. Especially from her lightweight trail boots. Her partner made fun of her for wearing them — said that detectives shouldn’t be wearing hiking boots, especially not in the city, but they were tough and she was as fast in them as she was in her trainers. Which she thought made them a lot more suited to tracking down scumbags than Roper’s black leather Chelsea boots.  He disagreed. She didn’t really care.  Smoking thirty a day meant that he wasn’t going to be doing much running anyway. ‘Come on,’ Cake said, jerking the pad. ‘Again. Like you mean it.’ She flicked her head, throwing sweat onto the matt, wound up, lifted her leg, snapped her knee back, and then lashed out. Her shin smashed into the training pad with a dull thwap and she sank into her knees, panting.  Cake clapped them together and grinned with wide, crooked teeth. ‘Good job,’ he said. ‘You’re really getting some power into those, now. But make sure to ice that foot, yeah?’ She caught her breath quickly and stood up, nodding, strands of ash-blonde hair sticking to her forehead, the thick plait running between her lithe shoulders coming loose. ‘Sure,’ she said, measuring her trainer. Cake was six-two and twice her weight. He was Windrush, in his fifties, and ran a mixed martial arts gym just near Duckett’s Green. He was a retired boxer turned trainer that scored his nickname after winning a fight in the late nineties on his birthday. When the commentator asked what he was going to do to celebrate, he said that he was going to eat a birthday cake. Everyone thought that was funny, and it stuck. He had a pretty bad concussion at the time, which probably contributed to the answer. But there was no getting away from it now.  He pulled the pads off his forearms and rubbed his eyes. ‘Coffee?’ he asked, looking over at the clock on the wall. It was just before seven.  He yawned and stretched, cracking his spine. The gym wouldn’t open until midday to the public, but he lived upstairs in a tiny studio, and he and Jamie had an arrangement. It kept him fit and active, and she could train one-on-one. Just how she liked it. She paid her dues of course, slid him extra on top of the monthly for his time. But he said that

Ich verließ mich auf das Prinzip, dass es eigentlich immer anders lief, als ich es mir ausmalte, und ging im Geist alle möglichen Katastrophen durch. Was ich mir lebhaft genug vorstellte, würde sicher nicht eintreten.

But just as it's reductive to say the Kwons might as well be white because they've been able to prosper in America-they've likely never felt white a day in their lives-it's also wrong to place them within a broader category of 'minorities' or 'people of color' and suggest they share in the same struggle.

I guess I'm not a grown-up yet. I can't leave things behind. When I'm able to let go of the past without looking back, that's when I'll be a grown-up.

He turned all the holes in my stockings into raindrops.

Maybe he just didn't want to become an "adult".Maybe he was scared and din't want to be the "adult" that everybody has to become. So he decided to stay a child forever. A child who believes in magic, no matter what.

Maybe he just didn't want to become an "adult". Maybe he was scared and didn't want to be the "adult" that everybody has to become. So he decided to stay a child forever. A child who believes in magic, no matter what.

Isn't it cold? The asphalt you're standing on...

I finally realise not all roads are asphalt roads...

That night, I told my mother I had no option but to quit the piano. I won't be delusional, I said. I didn't have the talent. It wasn't enough to be good. I could see no point in devoting this life to music if I wouldn't add to what leading pianists, the ones I idolized, had achieved. I shouldn't waste time trying.

DIDN’T COME GET me until two in the morning, and she was still singing—in French.” Lydia yawned hugely, then sang, “Ne me quitte pas, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. What am I going to do? Ben won’t let me into his room every night, no matter what Jeffrey says.” “Sleep in my room from now on,” said Alice. “You can have either the top or bottom bunk.” “Really?” What a relief to never again sleep in the mansion. “Actually, I do prefer the top bunk, so if you wouldn’t mind the bottom—” “No, I mean, do you really think I can stay with you? Wouldn’t your parents mind?” “They’ll like it. They’ve decided you’re a good influence on me.” Lydia thought that being a good influence made her sound as boring as being a person who liked everyone (except she didn’t). But if that was what she had to suffer to get out of the mansion, she’d accept it. Both girls were in their new ballet skirts, swishing along on their way to see Blossom. Alice was carrying the oats in a bag—the skirts were without pockets—and Lydia was carrying Natalie’s phone, plus two books, in another bag. Alice knew about only one of the books, Practical Magic, written by an Alice for grown-ups. The other, sneaked in by Lydia, was a copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. She was hoping to convince both Alice and Blossom to love it. Unless—she stopped walking—that could be considered being a good influence. No, she decided, and started walking again, quickly, to catch up with Alice as she entered the field. They’d decided to begin the visit with a dance, the best way to show Blossom their new skirts. This was the first time the two of them had danced together seriously, and anyone other than sheep would have appreciated the vision—the beautiful skirts, the fusion of ballet and tae kwon do, the paean to freedom and friendship. But to Blossom, the oat carriers seemed to have gone crazy, spinning around like bugs trying to escape a water trough. She stopped halfway across the field, apparently planning to chomp on grass until they became less buglike. The dancing a failure, the girls moved on to the second part of the entertainment. Alice took out oats, Lydia took out Practical Magic, and Blossom came the rest of the way over, accepting the oats and ignoring the book.