Min Jin Lee Quotes

Living everyday in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage.

You want to see a very bad man? Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination. Let’s see how good he is when he can do whatever he wants.

History has failed us, but no matter.

Learn everything. Fill your mind with knowledge—it’s the only kind of power no one can take away from you.” Hansu never told him to study, but rather to learn, and it occurred to Noa that there was a marked difference. Learning was like playing, not labor.

No one is clean. Living makes you dirty.

We cannot help but be interested in the stories of people that history pushes aside so thoughtlessly.

a man must learn to forgive—to know what is important, that to live without forgiveness was a kind of death with breathing and movement.

...a God that did everything we thought was right and good wouldn't be the creator of the universe. He would be our puppet.

Patriotism is just an idea, so is capitalism or communism. But ideas can make men forget their own interests. And the guys in charge will exploit men who believe in ideas too much.

There's nothing fucking worse than knowing that you're just like everybody else.

You are very brave, Noa. Much, much braver than me. Living every day in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage.

There was more to being something than just blood.

Fill your mind with knowledge—it’s the only kind of power no one can take away from you.

There was consolation: The people you loved, they were always there with you, she had learned. Sometimes, she could be in front of a train kiosk or the window of a bookstore, and she could feel Noa's small hand when he was a boy, and she would close her eyes and think of his sweet grassy smell and remember that he had always tried his best. At those moments, it was good to be alone to hold on to him.

Noa had been a sensitive child who had believed that if he followed all the rules and was the best, then somehow, the hostile world would change its mind. His death may have been her fault for having allowed him to believe such cruel ideals.

A woman's lot is to suffer.

In the end, your belly was your emperor.

In Seoul, people like me get called Japanese bastards, and in Japan, I'm just another dirty Korean no matter how much money I make or how nice I am. So what the fuck?

because she would not believe that she was no different than her parents, that seeing him as only Korean—good or bad—was the same as seeing him only as a bad Korean. She could not see his humanity, and Noa realized that this was what he wanted most of all: to be seen as human.

Sunja-ya, a woman’s life is endless work and suffering. There is suffering and then more suffering. It’s better to expect it, you know. You’re becoming a woman now, so you should be told this. For a woman, the man you marry will determine the quality of your life completely. A good man is a decent life, and a bad man is a cursed life—but no matter what, always expect suffering, and just keep working hard. No one will take care of a poor woman—just ourselves.

It was not Hansu that she missed, or even Isak. What she was seeing again in her dreams was her youth, her beginning, and her wishes--so this is how she became a woman.

Life makes you pay...everybody pays something

Her father had taught her not to judge people on such shallow points: What a man wore or owned had nothing to do with his heart and character.

Neither had realized the loneliness each had lived with for such a long time until the loneliness was interrupted by genuine affection.

the pain didn’t go away, but its sharp edge had dulled and softened like sea glass.

All her life, Sunja had heard this sentiment from other women, that they must suffer—suffer as a girl, suffer as a wife, suffer as a mother—die suffering. Go-saeng—the word made her sick.

Even if there were hundred bad Japanese, if there was one good one, he refused to make a blanket statement

Although, if you like everything you read, I can't take you seriously. Perhaps you didn't think about these books long enough.

People are awful. Drink some beer.” Haruki

But ideas can make men forget their own interests. And the guys in charge will exploit men who believe in ideas too much.

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.

He was suffering, and in a way, he could manage that; but he had caused others to suffer, and he did not know why he had to live now and recall the series of terrible choices that had not looked so terrible at the time. Was that how it was for most people?

What surprised him was that as he felt closer to death, he felt the terror of death, its very finality. There were so many things he had failed to do. There were even more things he should never have done.

She could not see his humanity, and Noa realized that this was what he wanted most of all: to be seen as human.

no matter what, always expect suffering, and just keep working hard.

It's not that you don't understand, it's that you don't like it.

Etsuko had failed in this important way—she had not taught her children to hope, to believe in the perhaps-absurd possibility that they might win. Pachinko was a foolish game, but life was not.

But a God that did everything we thought was right and good wouldn't be the creator of the universe. He would be our puppet. He wouldn't be God. There's more to everything than we can know.

Noa stared at her. She would always believe that he was someone else, that he wasn't himself but some fanciful idea of a foreign person; she would always feel like she was someone special because she had condescended to be with someone everyone else hated. His presence would prove to the world that she was a good person, an educated person, a liberal person. Noa didn't care about being Korean when he was with her; in fact, he didn't care about being Korean or Japanese with anyone. He wanted to be just himself, whatever that meant; he wanted to forget himself sometimes. But that wasn't possible. It would never be possible with her.

People are rotten everywhere you go. They’re no good. You want to see a very bad man? Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination. Let’s see how good he is when he can do whatever he wants.” Sunja

Man, life’s going to keep pushing you around, but you have to keep playing.

A snake that sheds its skin is still a snake.

Why did her family think pachinko was so terrible? Her father, a traveling salesman, had sold expensive life insurance policies to isolated housewives who couldn't afford them, and Mozasu created spaces where grown men and women could play pinball for money. Both men had made money from chance and fear and loneliness. Every morning, Mozasu and his men tinkered with the machines to fix the outcomes--there could only be a few winners and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones. How could you get angry at the ones who wanted to be in the game? Etsuko had failed in this important way--she had not taught her children to hope, to believe in the perhaps-absurd possibility that they might win. Pachinko was a foolish game, but life was not.

It was possible that he was in love with the way she wrote the number two—her parallel lines expressing a kind of free movement inside the invisible box that contained the ideograph’s strokes.

In life, there was so much insult and injury, and she had no choice but to collect what was hers.

All landowners who were foolish enough to stick around were shot. Communists see people only in simple categories.

Men have choices that women don’t.

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.

Every morning, Mozasu and his men tinkered with the machines to fix the outcomes-there could only be a few winners and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones. How could you get angry at the ones who wanted to be in the game?

COMPETENCE CAN BE A CURSE.

The Lord forgives, but the world does not forgive.

The people you loved, they were always there with you, she had learned.

So then the success tax comes from envy, and the shit tax comes from exploitation... The tax for being mediocre comes from you and everyone else knowing that you are mediocre. It's a heavier tax than you'd think.

He walked until he couldn't hear her scream his name anymore. He walked rigidly and calmly, not believing that a person you loved - yes he has loved her - could end up being someone you never knew.

After losing four of his children and his wife to cholera five years ago, Shin found that he could not speak much about loss. Everything a person said sounded glib and foolish.

If you do well at anything, you gotta pay up to all the people who did worse. On the other hand, if you do badly, life makes you pay a shit tax, too. Everybody pays something.

People are awful. Drink some beer.

Learn everything. Fill your mind with knowledge—it’s the only kind of power no one can take away from you.

People are rotten everywhere you go. They’re no good. You want to see a very bad man? Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination. Let’s see how good he is when he can do whatever he wants.

Etsuko had to go back to the restaurant, but she settled on the sofa for a few minutes. When she had been a young mother there used to be only one time in her waking hours where she’d felt a kind of peace, and that was always after her children went to bed for the night. She longed to see her sons as they were back then: their legs chubby and white, their mushroom haircuts misshapen because they could never sit still at the barber. She wished she could take back the times she had scolded her children just because she was tired. There were so many errors. If life allowed revisions, she would let them stay in their bath a little longer, read them one more story before bed, and fix them another plate of shrimp.

The penalties incurred for the mistakes you made had to be paid out in full to the members of your family.

He understood why his customers wanted to play something that looked fixed but which also left room for randomness and hope.

Living every day in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage.

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).

But a God that did everything we thought was right and good wouldn't be the creator of the universe. He would be our puppet.

But she could not imagine clinging to Japan, which was like a beloved stepmother who refused to love you,

It was always better to say less.

that a man must learn to forgive—to know what is important, that to live without forgiveness was a kind of death with breathing and movement.

Hansu never told him to study, but rather to learn, and it occurred to Noa that there was a marked difference. Learning was like playing, not labor.

Don't do what I do but what you think is right. But whatever you do, you can't keep yourself from getting hurt. The heart doesn't seem to work that way.

From the moment she'd met him, she'd felt his presence all around her.

She wished she had something like baseball that she could talk about with her daughter—a safe subject they could visit without subtext or aggression.

And this is something Solomon must understand. We can be deported. We have no motherland. Life is full of things he cannot control so he must adapt. My boy has to survive.

the stories of Koreans in Japan should be told somehow when so much of their lives had been despised, denied, and erased.

All these people - both the Japanese and the Koreans - are fucked because they keep thinking about the group. But here's the truth: There's no such thing as a benevolent leader.

Listen, if people don’t like you, it’s not always your fault. My brother told me that.

choose the important over the urgent.

If anything, he wanted a very simple life filled with nature, books, and perhaps a few children. He knew that later in life, he also wanted to be let alone to read and to be quiet.

to live without forgiveness was a kind of death with breathing and movement.

She has loved him, and she could not bear the thought of him being gone form this life.

The peasants knew that a spoiled son did more harm to a family than a dead one, and they kept themselves from indulging him too much.

I’m crazy. Poor and stupid. This is the reason why poor people stay poor, you know that? They spend all their money on pride.

I’ll take care of myself and my people. You think I’d trust my life to a bunch of politicians? The people in charge don’t know anything. And the ones who do don’t care.

For this was love, wasn’t it? To have someone clean up after you, to think about you when you were sick, to not walk away when there was nothing to be gained for the labor required.

It was still hard for a Korean to become a Japanese citizen, and there were many who considered such a thing shameful—for a Korean to try to become a citizen of its former oppressor. When she told her friends in New York about this curious historical anomaly and the pervasive ethnic bias, they were incredulous at the thought that the friendly, well-mannered Japanese they knew could ever think she was somehow criminal, lazy, filthy, or aggressive—the negative stereotypical traits of Koreans in Japan.

A woman’s life is endless work and suffering. There is suffering and then more suffering. It’s better to expect it, you know. You’re becoming a woman now, so you should be told this. For a woman, the man you marry will determine the quality of your life completely. A good man is a decent life, and a bad man is a cursed life—but no matter what, always expect suffering, and just keep working hard. No one will take care of a poor woman—just ourselves.

But people will always say things. They will always say terrible things, no matter what. It’s normal for me. I’m nobody.

Somewhere after being sorry, there had to be another day, and even after a conviction, there could be good in the judgment.

If it were possible for a man and his wife to share one heart, Hoonie was this steady, beating organ.

He never told him to study, but rather to learn, and it occurred to him that there was a marked difference. Learning was like playing, not labor.

A woman’s lot is to suffer.

For people like us, home doesn't exist.

I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion… The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them, encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations… It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm… Finally, it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly die for such limited imaginings. —Benedict Anderson

What did Joseph say to his brothers who had sold him into slavery when he saw them again? “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

there is a tax, you know, on success.” “Huh?” “If you do well at anything, you gotta pay up to all the people who did worse. On the other hand, if you do badly, life makes you pay a shit tax, too. Everybody pays something.

It was not Hansu that she missed, or even Isak. What she was seeing in her dreams was her youth, her beginning, and her wishes—so this was how she became a woman. Without Hansu and Isak and Noa, there wouldn't have been this pilgrimage to this land. Beyond the dailiness, there had been moments of shimmering beauty and some glory, too, even in this ajumma's life. Even if no one knew, it was true.

The Lord continues to be committed to us even when we sin. He continues to love us. In some ways, the nature of his love for us resembles an enduring marriage, or how a father or mother may love a misbegotten child. Hosea was being called to be like God when he had to love a person who would have been difficult to love. We are difficult to love when we sin; a sin is always a transgression against the Lord.

Casey meant it when she said, 'Forgive us for our debts as we forgive our debtors,' because they were for her the hardest words to live by, and by saying them, she hoped they'd become possible. Like Ted, Casey would never discuss her ambivalent views on religion. She was honest enough to admit that her privacy cloaked a fear: the fear of being found out as a hypocrite" (Free Food For Millionaires, p.100-101.)

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.)

She would always believe that he was someone else, that he wasn’t himself but some fanciful idea of a foreign person; she would always feel like she was someone special because she had condescended to be with someone everyone else hated. His presence would prove to the world that she was a good person, an educated person, a liberal person. Noa didn’t care about being Korean when he was with her; in fact, he didn’t care about being Korean or Japanese with anyone. He wanted to be, to be just himself, whatever that meant; he wanted to forget himself sometimes.