Best 14 quotes of Kyung-sook Shin on MyQuotes

Did Mother know? That I, too, needed her my entire life? -Kyung-Sook Shin, Please Look After Mother

Everyone has his or her own means of defining value.

Full of questions and pleas, her eyes seemed to be asking for rescue.

He looked so silly that I could not stop laughing, even as my tears kept flowing. Is the root of laughter also sorrow? As I laughed, I was filled with both joy and sorrow.

I guess saying goodbye makes us reach out for those we would ordinarily ignore. Maybe we care about them more, too, when it is time to part.

I’m trying to think about what I can do. But instead all that comes to mind are the things I can’t do. How do we judge truth and goodness? Where are justice and righteousness hiding? A society that is violent or corrupt prohibits mutual communication. A society that fears communication is unable to solve any problem. It looks for someone to shift the responsibility to and turns even more violent.

I wish someone would promise me that nothing is meaningless,” he said. “I wish there were promises worth believing in. That after we’ve been hunted and lonely and anxious and living in fear, there is something else.

Living does not mean passing through a void of nothingness but rather through a web of relationships among beings, each with their own weight and volume and texture. Insofar as everything is always changing, so our sense of hope shall never die out. Therefore, I leave you all with one final thought: Live. Until you are down to your final breath, love and fight and rage and grieve and live.

Now I know that anytime you see a “no trespassing” sign, it means you’ve got to go in and take a look.

She says that all the things that have happened are actually in the present, that old things are all mixed up in current things, and current things mingle with future things, and future things are combined with old things; it's just that we can't feel it.

We are all travelers crossing from this bank to that bank, from this world to nirvana. But the waters are rough. We must rely on something in order to make it over. That something could be the art or literature that you aspire to create. You will think that the thing you choose will serve as your boat or raft to carry you to that other bank. But if you think deeply about it, you may find that it does not carry you but rather you carry it. Perhaps only the student who truly savors this paradox will make it safely across. Literature and art are not simply what will carry you; they are also what you must lay down your life for, what you must labor over and shoulder for the rest of your life.

When he came home with the traditional gift of underwear bought with his first paycheck, she barely looked at it, and coldly shot at him, “What about what you were going to be?

When I lived here and woke up from the fog in my head, I would walk by myself to the grave site set aside for me, so that I could feel comfortable if I lived there after death.

You were caught off guard. You never thought of Mom as separate from the kitchen. Mom was the kitchen and the kitchen was Mom. You never wondered, Did Mom like being in the kitchen?