No One Writes Back

by Jang Eun-Jin

I dare say that in life, it is when we travel that our minds and hearts are the most open. It’s a time when we think more than at any other time in our lives.

If I wash up or eat, I feel as though the day’s worth of feelings goes down the drain and the esophagus altogether. The drain and the esophagus are places unknown to me. All I know is that they are dark, smelly, black, and long.

It seems, however, that humans can’t free themselves of choices and decisions, no matter where they go. Life doesn’t go on if you don’t choose one thing or another.

Reading over a letter you wrote the night before is an act of denying yourself. When you read it over, you’re bound to find at least one or two sentences you want to erase, like a mistake you made in the past. I don’t think you need to be ashamed of them, since they’re symptoms that occurred because you were too true to your feelings, or because you were full of courage. If we don’t allow ourselves to have courage at night, at least, we’ll have to live as cowards all our lives.

They look at the disabled in a different light, because in their minds, people with disabilities are different from themselves. They look at the disabled in one of two ways: with pity or exclusion. Despite everything, pity is slightly better than exclusion.

People tend to remember bad things before the good, and more vividly and for a longer period of time, too.

The bleakness felt in the extended space and the loneliness flickering across the faces of the people, their heads bent, seem to be the smallest, as well as the largest, elements the artist could choose to depict solitude.

True loneliness comes not from being alone, but from being with someone else.

“I put this age as the utmost limit at which a man might fall in love without making a fool of himself.”

“To write, it’s also important to listen to and observe other people.”

I recall what my ex-girlfriend once said, that people look their sexiest not when they’ve taken off their clothes, but when they’re concentrating on their work.

I felt, for the first time, that nothing brings you so much joy in life as being approved of by someone.

don’t want to be left out anymore, not today. A disabled person is left out just by being disabled.

The night has always belonged to couples.

novelists are sorry people who must write all their lives to come up with just one great sentence,”

“The world . . . doesn’t . . . cut you any slack because you’re miserable. I’d say it treats you even more cruelly, if anything,”

After that, I realized that everything in life happens in a day.

I was never alone, not before my journey, not during my journey, and not after my journey.

Life is bearable when you have someone to write, and someone who writes you back. Even if it’s just one person.