Quotes from Min Jin Lee

You must be a diligent person with a humble heart. Have compassion for everyone. Even your enemies.

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 then that Ella realized she had no mother who'd search for her in this way. She was surprised by how bitterly she felt this lack-for a contingency that would never occur.

If she'd had the cash in her pocket, she would've just given it to him. Money had always been a kind of burden to her. If she had it, she spent it, and when she didn't have it, she worried about how she would live. She wished she had enough so she wouldn't feel so anxious all the time. Would there ever be enough?

it was not in his nature to argue.

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

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.

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.

For a woman, the man you marry will determine the quality of your life completely.

There's nothing fucking worse than knowing that you're just like everybody else. What a messed-up, lousy existence.

I talk to the dead although I don't believe in ghosts. But it makes me feel good to speak with them. Maybe that is what God is. A good God wouldn't have let my babies die. I can't believe in that. My babies did nothing wrong." "I agree. They did nothing wrong." He looked at her thoughtfully. "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.

I'm not a good man, but I'm not a bad one, either.

My life is nothing. It wouldn't have any meaning without putting it to good use. Don't you think?

Trying to save money while paying medical bills was like pouring oil into a broken jar.

She had worn her most expensive peach-colored georgette silk dress with matching heels and a real pearl necklace…she sat crumpled and half awake…like a crushed butterfly.

She couldn't say this to her son, however, because Noa was someone who had studied, labored, and tried to lift himself out of their street, and he thought all the men who hadn't done so weren't very bright, either. He would not understand. Her son could not feel compassion for those who did not try.

And Mozasu? He is Baek Isak's son? He doesn't look like me." Sunja

I try not to cry, because it doesn't seem to make any difference. And whenever I do, I shut my eyes to make it stop.

You want to see a very bad man? Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination.

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

Your grandmother Sunja and great-aunt Kyunghee visit me on Saturdays. Did you know that? They pray for me, too. I don't understand the Jesus stuff, but it's something holy to have people touch you when you're sick. The nurses here are afraid to touch me. Your grandmother Sunja holds my hands, and your great-aunt Kyunghee puts cool towels on my head when I get too hot. They're kind to me, though I'm a bad person—

A woman's lot is to suffer,

There was some prettiness in her eyes, but her youth was spent.

Hoonie would have known enough not to want something he could not have—this forbearance was something that any normal peasant would have accepted about his life and what he was allowed to desire.