Exhibit Quotes

“Jin, faith isn't willed. It's a profit of ritual, the habit of worship. It's like what you do with the photos, darling.”
― R. O. Kwon, Exhibit: A Novel

“I had no time for arguing. I paid a shaman to help. She called on spirits, howled, spun, the old shebang.
Oh, she said. I had a path to the ending I'd want. But I'd give up the kind of living I'd known.
Sure, fine, I said. So, tell me what I'm doing.
But it was all she'd pass along. If I'd just listen to the wind, she said.”
― R. O. Kwon, Exhibit: A Novel

“Dear vexing Lord, can I tell You, though, what is is to push on living while I don't have You? Its strength, Lord, this urge, the cut-stalk lust to persist. Lopped free of afterlife, of everlasting, I dangle bare legs above oblivion. People topple in; I will, too. O far-flung Lord, You won't stop the fall. One artist, not long before his death, noticed a lilac spring by his hospital bed. He'd marvel at the lilac, still pulling water from its slim vase. Dying, it drinks, he said. It goes on swilling.”
― R. O. Kwon, Exhibit: A Novel

“It's a gift lacking all parallel, being trusted with so full a life.”
― R. O. Kwon, Exhibit: A Novel

“I used to think I'd begun life as a partial fish. In the story of my birth, I'd flung to shore a fortnight late. Birth pangs lasting hours, ten days, as 엄마 said she'd kill people if I got forced out before I was willing. She didn't let them operate until told I'd die. I hollered in the doctor's face, as though furious he'd intruded. She loved retelling this hero's epic, taking pride in the strength of will I'd shown, fighting birth. "Oh, no, darling, not by sea section," she'd said, laughing. I had no littoral origins. I'd spun to life in her body's soul; I'd tried staying. To split us up, they'd had to rip her apart.”
― R. O. Kwon, Exhibit: A Novel

“She'd fixed juleps with me in mind; absent, I'd existed to Lidija.”
― R. O. Kwon, Exhibit: A Novel