Quotes About Struggle

fight and end up as a martyr. Protesting was for young men without families.

In America, everything seemed fixable, and in Japan, difficult problems were to be endured. Shoganai, shoganai. How many times had he lheard these words? It cannot be helped. His mother had apparently hated that expression, and suddenly he understood her rage against this cultural resignation that violated her beliefs and wishes. Pachinko, p456

At the crowded bar, men were drinking and making jokes, but there hadn't been a soul in that squalid room—smelling of burnt dried squid and alcohol—who wasn't worried about money and facing the terror of how he was supposed to take care of his family in this strange and difficult land.

I know you didn't want us. My brothers told me, and I told them they were wrong even though I knew they weren't. I clung to you because I wasn't going to let you just leave what you started. How can you tell me how hard it is to have children? You haven't even tried to be a mother. What right do you have? What makes you a mother?

For every patriot fighting for a free Korea, or for any unlucky Korean bastard fighting on behalf of Japan, there were ten thousand compatriots on the ground and elsewhere who were just trying to eat. In the end, your belly was your emperor.

History has failed almost everybody who is ordinary.

In their long marriage, the wife gave birth to three sons, but only Hoonie, the eldest and the weakest one, survived. Hoonie was born with a cleft palate and a twisted foot; he was however, endowed with hefty shoulders, a squat build, and a gold complexion.

Anguish had deepened the lines along her mother's mouth like a frown setting in for good.

he walked home alone, deep in thoughts of her, and he knew that he wanted to be with her, even if it would not be easy.

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...His faith had not wavered, but his temperament had altered seemingly forever. It was as if a warm room had gotten cooler, but it was still the same room.

Pay attention: The ones who pay the shit tax are mostly people who were born in the wrong place and the wrong time and are hanging on to the planet by their broken fingernails. They don't even know the fucking rules of the game. You can't even get mad at 'em when they lose. Life just fucks and fucks and fucks bastards like that.

never be a doctor. He couldn't see how he'd ever make any money in Korea when honest Koreans were losing property every day.

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

There's nothing fucking worse than knowing that you're just like everybody else. What a messed-up, lousy existence. And in this great country of Japan—the birthplace of all my fancy ancestors—everyone, everyone wants to be like everyone else. That's why it is such a safe place to live, but it's also a dinosaur village. It's extinct, pal. Carve up your piece and invest your spoils elsewhere.

Lately, Sunja wanted to hold babies. How wonderful it would be not to have to worry about a war or having enough food to eat, or finding shelter. Solomon and Phoebe wouldn't have to labor the way she and Kyunghee had, but could just enjoy their children.

There are a lot of troubled young women in this world. We can't save them all.

It's a filthy world... No one is clean. Living makes you dirty.

being Korean was just another horrible encumbrance, much like being poor or having a shameful family you could not cast off

A woman's life is endless work and suffering. There is suffering and then more suffering. It's better to expect it, you know

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.

Leah looked perpetually frightened in the streets, and both she and Joseph were treated like idiots by their customers, who cared little that the hardworking pair were fluent and literate in another language.

What do you do with silence? Casey wondered. It was easier to yell back at her father. It was impossible to beat a person who refused to fight, who's never had a wish to win.

Viver todos os dias na presença daqueles que se recusam a reconhecer sua humanidade exige muita coragem.

earlier. Thank