Quotes from Min Jin Lee

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

A snake that sheds its skin is still a snake.

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.

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

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.

The Lord forgives, but the world does not forgive.

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.

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.

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

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.

People are awful. Drink some beer.

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

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.

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.