God Has No Grandchildren Quotes

“She comforted herself by imagining that each star in the sky represented all the suffering that one person had endured that day, and that the harder the suffering the brighter the star, just as a rare gem shines more brightly the more it is polished.”
― Kim Gyeong-uk, God Has No Grandchildren

“A friend who had divorced her husband because he had cheated on her, had surprised Yeong-sin by confiding that she had felt liberated when she found out about her husband's affair. It stunned Yeong-sin, because she knew that her friend was being completely truthful. And Yeong-sin shuddered to realize how the unvarnished truth could make a mockery of the reassuring latitude that people marry because they're in love. It was a platitude that most people, including herself, wanted to believe. Once the truth is revealed, it is impossible to go back to the world as it had been before. That's because we have changed in light of the truth, but the world has not. If the truth is discomfiting or cruel, that's because only we are changed by it. Before we know the truth, we tremble in fear of it; after we know the truth we shiver with regret. Platitudes are the lies that we tell in order to escape fear or regret. On the one hand Yeong-sin hoped her boy-friend would propose to her, but on the other hand she was afraid he would.”
― Kim Gyeong-uk, God Has No Grandchildren

“A category is defined by what is not included in it. And whats outside a given category, is in turn, part of a larger, more comprehensive category that exists outside of that. When someone is standing in front of me, I see a different aspect of that person depending on where I am standing. This holds true only when the other person and I are at the same level. If you are in an airplane in the sky and you look down at a person on the ground, that person looks like the same speck, no matter what angle you see him from. That's because he belongs now to a different category or level. Do you know why people are obsessed with categories? It's because they're afraid of what lies outside their own category. They're afraid of the fact that they are a mere speck. That's also why they simply consider everything outside their own category as alien and exclude it. Just as Procrustes did when he cut people to size in order to make them fit his bed. It is fear that drives Jack to chop down his own beanstalk, isn't it? And of course his fear ends up making him unable to climb up to the world beyond the clouds, ever again. Poor fellow! When people lock themselves into the category they call 'romance novels,' they end up reading Dostoyevsky as romance. Keep this in mind. The alien doesn't exist outside you, it's inside you.”
― Kim Gyeong-uk, God Has No Grandchildren

“We demand promises from people not because we don't trust them but because of fear within ourselves.”
― Kim Gyeong-uk, God Has No Grandchildren

“But no matter how tedious the fight, it is what eventually determines the winner. A man who can't win the fight with himself outside of the ring brings nothing but defeat into the ring.”
― Kim Gyeong-uk, God Has No Grandchildren

“Everywhere you go there's always a ring. People say the world is a boxing ring. It's easy enough to say that. But if it's true, shouldn't we always be prepared to fight? It's not just a meaningless metaphor. There's truth behind it. Do you know why the ring is a square? It's because nine times out of ten, the places you go in life are square. Bedrooms, classrooms, offices, elevators, buses, and so on and so on. From the cradle to the grave, we can't get away from squares. A man's destiny is a square.”
― Kim Gyeong-uk, God Has No Grandchildren

“When the majority of their days are behind them, what people really want is not a wonderful autobiography but someone who will listen to their life story.”
― Kim Gyeong-uk, God Has No Grandchildren