Pachinko

by Min Jin Lee

If it were possible for a man and his wife to share one heart, Hoonie was this steady, beating organ.

The peasants knew that a spoiled son did more harm to a family than a dead one, and they kept themselves from indulging him too much.

It wasn’t uncommon to hear rationalizations of this sort—the longing to transform bad deeds into good ones.

Isak had never wanted to live so much, and now, just when he wanted to live until he was very old, he’d been sent home to die.

Living every day in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage.”

What surprised him was that as he felt closer to death, he felt the terror of death, its very finality.

He resented her curiosity.

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

But the young man who stood in front of her was like cold metal, and he looked at her as if he could not remember who she was to him.

She wasn’t hideous or shameful to look at, but she had prematurely reached the stage in a woman’s life when no one noticed her entering or leaving a room.

The penalties incurred for the mistakes you made had to be paid out in full to the members of your family.

Both men had made money from chance and fear and loneliness.

“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.”

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.”