Quotes from Chang-Rae Lee

In this difficult era the most valuable commodity is the unfailing turn of the hours and how they retrieve for us the known harbor of yesterday.

For no matter the shadows of an age, the picture of a young couple in love, we are told, speaks most luminously of the future, as the span of that passion makes us believe we can overleap any walls, obliterate whatever obstacles.

If there is ever a moment when we are most vulnerable, it's when we're closest to the idea of the attained desire, and thus farthest from ourselves, which is when we'll tread through any flame.

She believed that displays of emotion signaled a certain failure between people. The only person who could upset her, make her cry or laugh in the open, was my father. He could always unsettle her face with a stern admonition or an old joke or pun in Korean. Otherwise, I thought she possessed the most exquisite control over the muscles of her face. She seemed to have the subtle power of inflection over them, the way a tongue can move air.

He should have had more faith in himself rather than give in to his weaker qualities, in particular his overeagerness to please and aversion to conflict and a lifelong infatuation with hope, which had him dreaming more than doing

The constant cry is that you belong here, or you make yourself belong, or you must go. (1998: 319)

A quantum of sweetness... what he meant was not just that a person should have a rightful share of whatever way you'd like to define sweetness, but also that the sweetness itself carries a special levy of contemplation of the infinitudes of sweetness that will go untasted, be forever unknown.

What does the pilgrim hope for at journey's end? Her beliefs confirmed? Revelation? Or does she secretly wish that the destination never quite materializes, that it keeps receding, ever shrouded in the distance, all the more to feed an inextinguishable devotion?

In America, he said, it's even hard to stay Korean.

And too intense a longing, everyone knows, can lead to poor decisions, rash actions, hopes that become outsized and in turn deform reality

I've read the dying feel no pain but sense everything that goes on around them. They view the scene from a brief distance above and no matter who they are or how old, they gain a wisdom from that last vista. But we are the living, remaining on the ground, and what we know is the narrow and the unbroken. Here, we are strewn about in in the lengthy expanse of an archipelago, too far to call one another, too far to see.

He handed her a plastic container of dried fruit Loreen had packed for the trip to use as a steering wheel so she could practice matching the turns....Fan's arms began to ache from holding up the container but she was beginning to enjoy herself, too, feeling an unlikely liberty and exhilaration, which if you think about it, can be seen as a good approximation of this life, where control is more believed than actual.

The men I've been with have this idea to make me over. I feel like a rock in some boy's polishing kit. I go in dull, scratched up, and then rumble rumble whirr, I'm supposed to come out precious and sparkling again. Does it work? They seem to think so. How do you feel? I asked. A little smaller. (1998: 148- 149)

Or maybe another baby might have helped us. Another try. Of course, that's the worst reason to have a child, anyone on the street can tell you that, because no one can handle being an attempt at something from the very start, (1998: 200)

The more we follow the turns of her journey, the more we realize that she is not quite the champion we would normally sing; she is not the heroine who wields the great sword; she is not the bearer of wisdom and light; she does not head the growing column, leading a new march. She is one of the ranks, this perfectly ordinary, exquisitely tiny person in whom we will reside, via both living and dreaming.

It is in the rules, a woman like that. There is no choice. With someone like Sophie, you are part of a greater agency, you make sure things are going right for her. If she is not mean-spirited or too selfish, you fall in love. You grow up, you become a man, you realize you have clear responsibilities. Then you are truly with her. You are partners.

She was quite enrapt, we were certain, even as her face remained almost totally blank, just as a drinking glass remains unchanged when filled with water but of course it is not at all the same.

Because if you imagine yourself truly alone, islanded off from everybody else, you end up facing, whether you want to or not, a lot of gnarly, unsettling questions.

Don't shame him! Your father is very proud. You don't know this, but he graduated from the best college in Korea, the very top, and he doesn't need to talk about selling fruits and vegetables. It's below him. He only does it for you, Byong-ho, he does everything for you. Now go and keep him company...I would learn in subsequent years that he had been trained as an industrial engineer, and had actually completed a master's degree.

We forget that every fervor will subside.

The funny thing about this existence is that once firmly settled we occupy it with less guard than we know...We feel ever obliged by everyday charges and tasks. They conscript us more and more. We find world enough in a frame. Until at last we take our places at the wheel, or wall, or line, having somewhere forgotten that we can look up.

And I do not live in broad infamy, nor hide from righteous pursuers or seekers of the truth. I do not mask my face or screen my doings of each day. I have not yet been banished from this earth. And though nearly every soul I've closely known has come to some dread or grave misfortune, I instead persist, with warmth and privilege accruing to me unabated, ever securing my good station here, the last place I will belong.

Thank goodness they are curious! It's a sign of healthy minds. And while it may be obvious, it's our responsibility to educate them to the idea that romancing the unknown is attended by myriad possibilities, too, shepherding them through those heady periods of urge and instinct when they think they can soar, and deliver them, we hope whole, to a place where perspective begins to reign, where they know that the groggy old bear at the zoo will instantly wake the moment you step inside the cage.

life at its most complete and comfortable can feel like you've suddenly discovered yourself sous-viding in a plunge tub set exactly at your body temperature. One day the water's no longer fine, which is when you crave a chill in your gut, a fresh sear on your chicken-tender ass, something to pep you the fuck up.