Kyung Sook Shin Quotes

You realize that you habitually thought of Mom when something in your life was not going well, because when you thought of her it was as though something got back on track, and you felt re-energized.

Either a mother and daughter know each other very well or they are strangers.

If you only do what you like, who's going to do what you don't like?

Life is sometimes amazingly fragile, but some lives are frighteningly strong.

...I have so many dreams of my own, and I remember things from my childhood, from when I was a girl and a young woman, and I haven't forgotten a thing. So why did we think of Mom as a mom from the very beginning? She didn't have the opportunity to pursue her dreams, and all by herself, faced everything the era dealt her, poverty and sadness, and she couldn't do anything about her very bad lot in life other than suffer through it and get beyond it and live her life to the very best of her ability, giving her body and her heart to it completely. Why did I never give a thought to Mom's dreams?

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.

People say that when a baby is crying the paternal grandmother will say, "The baby is crying, you should feed her," and the maternal grandmother will say, "Why is that baby crying so much, making her mom so tired?

إن صمت الموتى يجعل الباقين على قيد الحياة يصابون بالجنون.

Only after Mom went missing did you realize that her stories were piled inside you, in endless stacks. Mom's everyday life used to go on in a repeating loop, without a break. Her everyday words, which you didn't think deeply about and sometimes dismissed as useless when she was with you, awoke in your heart, creating tidal waves.

You're paved in my heart like an old road. Like the pebbles in a pebble field, dirt in dirt, dust in dust, cobwebs in cobwebs.

How can you live without trusting people? There are more people who are good than people who are bad!

Even though nobody knew that you were in my life, you were the person who brought a raft at every rapid current and helped me cross that water safely. I was happy that you were there. I came to tell you I was able to travel through my life because I could come to you when I was anxious, not when I was happy.

Mom's eyes held yours for a moment. 'I don't like or dislike the kitchen. I cooked because I had to. I had to stay in the kitchen so you could all eat and go to school. How could you only do what you like? There are things you have to do whether you like it or not.' Mom's expression asked, What kind of question is that? And then she murmured, 'If you only do what you like, who's going to do what you don't like?

You should only ask someone if they love you if you love them, regardless of what the answer might be.

Growing old does not make us any better at loving one another or understanding the meaning of life or death. Nor does knowledge come with the passage of time.

Life demands sacrifice and difficult decisions from us at every moment. Living does not mean passing through a void of nothingness but rather through a web of relationships among beings, each with their own weight and volume and texture.

If only we could have met each other sooner. We had led such poor and fragile lives, each alone.

إن تلك الأم هي الشخص الذي تلجأين إليه هندما يتملكك اليأس حيال شيء ما في هذه المدينه.

بعد أن اختفت، أصبحت حاضرة في حياتكم، و كأنكم تستطيعون مد أيديكم إليها و لمسها

If there were no sea between you and me...there wouldn't be this painful goodbye

Each time I thought about him, the idea that I would never be able to reach him spread through my mind like a shadow.

You left this house whenever you wanted to, and came back at your whim, and you never once thought that your wife would be the one to leave.

Did Mom know? That I, too, needed her my entire life?

I had no way of knowing where it began or where it ended. Only that it flowed without restraint.

You never wondered, Did Mom like being in the kitchen?

Even though Mom’s missing, summer will come and fall will come again and winter will come, like this. And I’ll be living in a world without Mom.

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.

To you, Mom was always Mom. It never occurred to you that she had once taken her first step, or had once been three or twelve or twenty years old. Mom was Mom. She was born as Mom. Until you saw her running to your uncle like that, it hadn’t dawned on you that she was a human being who harbored the exact same feeling you had for your own brothers, and this realization led to the awareness that she, too, had had a childhood. From then on, you sometimes thought of Mom as a child, as a girl, as a young woman, as a newlywed, as a mother who had just given birth to you.

Most things in the world are not unexpected if one thinks carefully about them. Even something one would call unusual—if one thinks about it, it’s really just a thing that was supposed to happen. Encountering unusual events often means you didn’t think things through.

كيف يسع المرء أن يفعل ما يحلو له فقط؟ هناك أشياء يجب على المرء فعلها سواء أأحبّ ذلك أم لا

If you don't want to cook, you should try throwing a dish.

there’s no beginning or end to kitchen work. You eat breakfast, then it’s lunch, and then it’s dinner, and when it’s bright again it’s breakfast again.…

Architects have to know everything there is to know about a space. You have to know its past and present. That way you can build its future.

Viewing the world from a different angle made it all look strange and dynamic, as if seeing it for the first time.

Time is always bearing down on us; nevertheless, had I understood in my youth that we can never relive the same moment twice, things might have turned out differently. Had I understood that, I would never have said goodbye to someone, and someone else might still be alive. If only I had known that the moment you think everything has ended, something new is beginning.

Try thinking of sleep as a kind of rebirth.

Taking his hand and letting it go was my way of saying goodbye.

So, I revealed secrets I did not want known in order to feel closer to someone. Oh, the loss I felt when I found the secrets I had held dear, that were so difficult to say out loud, that I had kept to myself, were being spread around the next day as if they were nothing! I think that was the moment I realized that pouring your heart out to someone might not bring you closer but in fact make you poorer instead.

I though it was weird to see people sleeping. It scared me to see them with their eyes closed. Like they might never wake up again.

I wish someone would promise me that nothing is meaningless,” he said. “I wish there were promises worth believing in. That after we’ve been hunted and lonely and anxious and living in fear, there is something else. Considering the way we are living right now, if we were young at the end of our lives instead, then maybe our dreams could come true.

I guess saying goodbye makes us reach out for those we would ordinarily ignore. Maybe we care about them more, too, when it is time to part.

Back then, he and I were always waiting for each other.

She said that cats were more attached to places than to people. And that was why cats are often found in abandoned houses.

Memory is an unannounced visitor. It lies crumpled in some corner of the body, then suddenly knocks on the door of reality and makes you scream.

All the relationships in the world are two-way, not determined by one side.

History is in charge of putting things in order and society is in charge of defining them. The more order we achieve, the more truth is hidden behind that neat surface... Perhaps literature is about throwing into disarray what has been defined... About making a mess of things, all over again.

When was the last time you’d told Mom about something that had happened to you? At a certain point, the conversations between you and Mom became simplified. Even that was not done face to face, but by telephone.

I wish someone would promise me that nothing is meaningless,” he said. “I wish there were promises worth believing in. That after we’ve been hunted and lonely and anxious and living in fear, there is something else.

When their warm bodies meet, San feels a surge of loneliness she's sure will last for the rest of her life.

You are that kind of person. The kind of person who has to do everything with your own hands.

You were caught off guard. You never thought of Mom as separate from the kitchen. Mom was the kitchen and the kitchen was Mom. You never wondered, Did Mom like being in the kitchen?

Without even having to think about it, I said, "I hope you all have someone who always makes you want to say, Let's remember this day forever." The students oohed and aahed, and then laughed at each other's reactions. I laughed with them. "Also..." They'd thought I was done but they quieted down again. "I hope you will never hesitate to say, I'll be right there.

إن معظم الأشياء في العالم لا تأتي غير متوقعة إن فكر المرء فيها بعناية. فحتى الأشياء التي قد يظنها غير اعتيادية، هي في الواقع أشياء كان من المقرر لها أن تحدث. وإن صادف المرء أحداثاً غير اعتيادية، فهذا يعني غالباً أنه لايفكر في الأمور ملياً.

Maybe if we hug a hundred strangers, he said, something will change.

If I opened my mouth to say a single word, all of the other expired words would have followed and spilled to the ground, as if the string that held them together had snapped.

إن المرأة تستطيع أن تعيش وتعتني بنفسها نوعا ما ، ولكن الرجل يصبح مثيرا للشفقة إن توجب عليه العيش بمفرده

وبعد أن أختفت فقط، أصبح وجودها ملموساً في حياتك وكأنك تستطيع أن تمدّ يدك إليها وتلمسها.

That your wife truly loved the world, and that you loved her.

They say that if you take in a person he will betray you, and if you take in a dog he will pay you back.

with farming, if you plant seeds in the spring you harvest them in the fall. If you plant spinach seeds, there is spinach; where you plant corn, there’s corn.… But there’s no beginning or end to kitchen work.

A house is such a strange thing. Everything else gets more worn when people handle it, and sometimes you can feel a person’s poison if you get too close to him, but that’s not what happens to a house. Even a good house falls apart quickly when nobody stops by. A house is alive only when there are people living in it, brushing against it, staying in it.

When I was tired, I went over to you and opened your fingers. Touched your toes. When I did that, I felt energized. When I first put shoes on you, I was really excited. When you toddled over to me, I laughed so much; even if someone had spilled out a heap of gold and silver and jewels in front of me, I wouldn’t have laughed like that.

She says that all the things that have happened are actually in the present, that old things are all mixed up in current things, and current things mingle with future things, and future things are combined with old things; it's just that we can't feel it.

Until last fall, you thought you knew your mom well-what your Mom like, what you had to do to appease her when she was angry, what she wanted to hear... But last fall, your belief that you knew her was shattered. You went for a visit without announcing it beforehand, and you discovered that you had become a guest...Maybe you'd become a guest even before then, when you moved to the city. After you left home, your mom never scolded you. Before, Mom would reprimand you harshly if you did something even remotely wrong.

I will let go of you now. You were my secret. You were in my life, someone whose presence would never be guessed by anyone who knew me. Even though nobody knew that you were in my life, you were the person who brought a raft at every rapid current and helped me cross that water safely. I was happy that you were there. I came to tell you that I was able to travel through my life because I could come to you when I was anxious, not when I was happy.

How far back does one's memory of someone go?

Full of questions and pleas, her eyes seemed to be asking for rescue.

The thought of life without her makes me feel like I’m trapped inside a cave.

It seems that whether we are aware of it or not, memory carries a dagger in its breast.

We each get one life that is our own. We each in our own way struggle to get ahead, love, grieve, and lose our loved ones to death.

If only i had known that the moment you think everything has ended, something new is beginning.

i can't wait for the years to pass Jung Yoon, he said in hollow voice. Can't wait to be older, when i will understand, even if i can't forgive. Can't wait to become strong.

فلم يخطر ببالي في تلك الأيام قط أن أفكر في حبي للعمل في المطبخ أو عدمه. فإن أعددت قدراً كبيراً من الأرز و واحدةً أصغر من الحساء، فلم أفكر في مقدار التعب الذي يهدّ جسمي، بل شعرا بالسعادة لأن هذا الطعام سيدخل أفواه أطفالي، إنك على الأرجح لا تتخيلين الآن مايعنيه هذا ، ولكننا في ذلك الوقت من الماضي كنت دائمي القلق من أن ينفد الطعام منا. فقد شكل تأمين الطعام والبقاء على قيد الحياة أهم غاية لنا. أخبرتك أمك وهي تبتسم أنها تعتبر تلك الأيام أسعد أيام حياتها.

في رأس السنة الماضية دونت الاهداف التي اريد أن أحققها في حياتي الى جانب الكتابة , اي لمجرد التسلية .إنها الأشياء التي أريد إنجازها في السنوات العشر القادمة, و لكنني لم أخطط لفعل أي شيء مع أمي , لم أدرك هذه الحقيقة و أنا أكتب هذه العبارات آنذاك , و لكنني أنظر إليها الآن بعد أن اختفت أمنا ....

All the things that have happened are actually in the present, that old things are all mixed in with current things, and future things are combined with old things; it's just that we can't feel it.

Sister. Do you think we’ll be able to be with her again, even if it’s just for one day? Do you think I’ll be given the time to understand Mom and hear her stories and console her for her old dreams that are buried somewhere in the pages of time? If I’m given even a few hours, I’m going to tell her that I love all the things she did, that I love Mom, who was able to do all of that, that I love Mom’s life, which nobody remembers. That I respect her. Sister, please don’t give up on Mom, please find Mom.

Do fear and love same the same root? I wondered if he was really scared of them. He knew everything there was to know about spiders, the way you take a deep interest in something because you love it so much.

Do you know what happens to all the things we did together in the past? When I asked my daughter this, although it was you I wanted to ask, my daughter said, “It’s so strange to hear you say something like this, Mom,” and asked, “Wouldn’t they have seeped into the present, not disappeared?” What difficult words! Do you understand what that means? She says that all the things that have happened are actually in the present, that old things are all mixed in with current things, and current things mingle with future things, and future things are combined with old things; it’s just that we can’t feel it. But now I can’t go on. Do

This desire grew slowly, stronger and stronger, but it never had any place to escape except for into sorrow. It has caused her to choose neglect. It has refused to be sublimated, but instead reappeared as a fresh green sadness.

تمتمت أمك بضعف قائلة : "أظن أنه من المخيف مجرد العيش يوما بعد يوم , و لكن أكثر ما يخيف في الأمر هو ألا يبقى شيء في مرطبان الأرز و أن أضطر إلى ترككم تتدورون جوعا .. و هذا ما جعل شفتي ترتجفان من فرط الرعب . لقد مرات بي أيام عصيبة كهذه

He said that the plane was too fast, that his body had arrived fast. That he was just ill because his soul could not keep pace with the speed of the plane and was still on its way home, and he would feel better once his soul had caught up.

How could you only do what you like? There are things you have to do whether you like it or not.” Mom’s expression asked, What kind of question is that? And then she murmured, “If you only do what you like, who’s going to do what you don’t like?

The baby bird was too frightened to flap its wings and just cowered in my hand. So i put it in my pocket. I couldn't stop petting it. I think it was the first time i ever touched something that way. My small pocket was squirming with life. It felt like I held the entire world in it. I don't remember how old i was, but i remember the joy i felt. I love you as much as the joy i felt.

In this age when words have lost their value, this age that is therefore dominated by violent words, by words swollen and yellowed with starvation, I have lost the will to speak any more of words. My despair over words is not an admittance of defeat in life.

You were the type of person who looked into someone's eyes when you talked. When you talked you sometimes told the entire story, or maybe only half, depending on the feeling you got from the person's eyes. Some eyes coaxed out stories you'd never told anyone.

He tells us life is beautiful. Did he also tell us what made it beautiful? I cannot remember. He simply said, "Life is a beautiful thing." What its beauty will bring us, and what its beauty will take from us, he does not say. Simply beautiful, is all he says.

I believe that no matter how rough the world becomes, there will always be teachers and students learning from each other, and even when savage and violent powers obstruct our freedoms, there will always be earnest and heartfelt first loves and friendships being born. While writing, I was focused on and absorbed in giving expression to those moments. I believe those are the moments that define our lives. We may be the protagonists of tragedy, but we are also the heroes of our most beautiful and thrilling experiences.

I’m trying to think about what I can do. But instead all that comes to mind are the things I can’t do. How do we judge truth and goodness? Where are justice and righteousness hiding? A society that is violent or corrupt prohibits mutual communication. A society that fears communication is unable to solve any problem. It looks for someone to shift the responsibility to and turns even more violent.

Most things in the world are not unexpected if one thinks carefully about them. Even something one would call unusual—if one thinks about it, it’s really just a thing that was supposed to happen. Encountering unusual events often means you didn’t think things through. Your

We are all travelers crossing from this bank to that bank, from this world to nirvana. But the waters are rough. We must rely on something in order to make it over. That something could be the art or literature that you aspire to create. You will think that the thing you choose will serve as your boat or raft to carry you to that other bank. But if you think deeply about it, you may find that it does not carry you but rather you carry it. Perhaps only the student who truly savors this paradox will make it safely across. Literature and art are not simply what will carry you; they are also what you must lay down your life for, what you must labor over and shoulder for the rest of your life.

Sometimes I wish we could start off old and get younger as we go," he said. "What would happen then?" I asked. "I guess we would both look old right now," he said. I could not imagine either of us looking old. "I wish someone would promise me that nothing is meaningless," he said. "I wish there were promises worth believing in. That after we have been hunted and lonely and anxious and living in fear, there is something else. Considering the way we are living right now, if we were young at the end of our lives instead, then maybe our dreams could come true.

Violets are very small plants. So small, they’re easily overlooked as weeds. That’s why I decided on the title Violets. There are women all around us who exist in silence, anonymous and without anything special about them; she could be me and she could be you. To amplify the voices of those women, whom no one could hear unless one was listening very carefully, to let them speak through my words—this is Violets.

The future rushes in and all we can do is take our memories and move forward with them. Memory keeps only what it wants. Images from memories are sprinkled throughout our lives, but that does not mean we must believe that our own or other people’s memories are of things that really happened. When someone stubbornly insists that they saw something with their own eyes, I take it as a statement mixed with wishful thinking. As what they want to believe. Yet as imperfect as memories are, whenever I am faced with one, I cannot help getting lost in thought. Especially when that memory reminds me of what it felt like to be always out of place and always a step behind. Why was it so hard for me to open my eyes every morning, why was I so afraid to form a relationship with anyone, and why was I nevertheless able to break down my walls and find him?

The first thing she did after she found out she was sick was to send me to live with my older female cousin in the city. I was in middle school at the time. For my mother, sending me away was her way of loving me. She said I was too young to be tied down to a sick mother and that I had too much to live for. Everybody has to say goodbye eventually, she told me, so you may as well start practicing. I cannot say she was right. I think that if we all have to say goodbye eventually then the best we can do is try to stay together as long as we possibly can. But it’s not that one of us was right and the other was wrong. We just saw things differently.

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.

You eat breakfast, then it’s lunch, and then it’s dinner, and when it’s bright again it’s breakfast again. It might have been better if I could have made different side dishes, but since the same things were planted in the fields, I always made the same panchan. If you do that over and over, there are times when you get so sick of it. When the kitchen felt like a prison, I went out the back and picked up the most misshapen jar lid and threw it as hard as I could at the wall.

If your wife had asked you to read her the novel, would you have read it to her? Before she went missing, you spent your days without thinking about her. When you did think about her, it was to ask her to do something, or to blame her or ignore. Habit can be a frightening thing. You spoke politely with others, but your words turned sullen toward your wife. Sometimes you even cursed at her. You acted as if it had been decreed that you couldn't speak politely to your wife. That's what you did.

Right now, you and I are crossing a deep, dark river. Every time that enormous weight presses down on us and the waters of the river rise over our throats and we want to give up and slip beneath the surface, remember: as heavy as the load we shoulder is the world that we tread upon. Earthbound beings unfortunately cannot break free of gravity. Life demands sacrifice and difficult decisions from us at every moment. Living does not mean passing through a void of nothingness but rather through a web of relationships among beings, each with their own weight and volume and texture. Insofar as everything is always changing, so our sense of hope shall never die out. Therefore, I leave you all with one final thought: Live. Until you are down to your final breath, love and fight and rage and grieve and live.

Life is sometimes amazingly fragile, but some lives are frighteningly strong. My elder daughter says that when you mow down weeds with a tractor, the weeds cling to the wheels of the tractor and spread seeds, to breed even at the moment they’re being cut. Your baby latched on ferociously. He suckled so hard that I felt I would be sucked in, so I slapped the baby’s bottom, which still had traces of redness from his birth. When that didn’t work, I had to force him off. A baby who’s lost its mother as soon as it’s born intuitively doesn’t want to let go when it’s near a nipple.

There are lives completely comprised of ambushes. Lives where you want to scream to the skies, to the earth, rip out your heart and cry the fates, How could this happen? But nothing comes out of your mouth … But to live through it, that is human. Your father wanted to be by your side but you wouldn’t let him come, and he was so tortured by that. How worried he was that there was not a word from you, like a dead person. Like recognizes like. I saw it when you first stepped into the yard. That you’re someone who has already died before. I know how hard it is to keep living despite this, but the only human friend I have in this life is your father. Please let him be by your side. Endure with him, enjoy the sunlight with him, pick fruit with him, sweep the snow with him, all of that. Tell him your stories and listen to him tell his. What else is there to do for each other.