90 Quotes by Han Kang

Looking at herself in the mirror, she never forgot that death was hovering behind that face. Faint yet tenacious, like black writing bleeding through thin paper.

There are certain memories that remain inviolate to the ravages of time. And to those of suffering. It is not true that everything is colored by time and suffering. It is not true that they bring everything to ruin.

A soul doesn’t have a body, so how can it be watching us?

The body that had caused me such shame was going to be devoured by the flames – that was no cause for regret. I wanted to pare myself down to a simpler existence, just as I had while I’d still been alive. I was determined not to be afraid of anything.

It seemed enough for her to just deal with whatever it was that came her way, calmly and without fuss.

The more stubborn the isolation, the more vivid these unlooked-for fragments, the more oppressive their weight. So that it seems the place I flee to is not so much a city on the other side of the world as further into my own interior.

I looked on in silence as my face blackened and swelled, my features turned into festering ulcers, the contours that had defined me, that had given me clear edges, crumbled into ambiguity, leaving nothing that could be recognized as me.

Perhaps the only things he truly loved were his images – those he’d filmed, or then again, perhaps only those he had yet to film.

I don’t know you,” she muttered, tightening her grip on the receiver, which she’d hung back in the cradle but was still clutching. “So there’s no need for us to forgive each other. Because I don’t know you.