Lemon Quotes

“Death carves a clear line between the dead and the living,' she said in a solemn tone. 'The dead are over there and the rest of us are over here. When someone dies, no matter how great they were, it's like drawing a permanent line between that person and the rest of humanity. If birth means begging to join the side of the living, then death has the power to kick everyone out. That's why I think death, with its power to sever things forever, is far more objective, more dignified, than birth, which is the starting point of everything.”
― Kwon Yeo-Sun, Lemon

“I still can't help but wonder, do our lives truly hold no meaning? Even if you try desperately to find it, to contrive some kind of meaning, is it true that what's not there isn't there? Does life leave only misery behind? Could the fact that we're alive—the fact that we're in this life where joy and terror and peace and danger mingle—couldn't that itself be the meaning of life?”
― Kwon Yeo-Sun, Lemon

“I still can’t help but wonder”
― Kwon Yeo-Sun, Lemon

“Like those who had no idea their youth was gone, I’d lost myself without realizing it.”
― Kwon Yeo-Sun, Lemon

“What you imagine has no limit or end”
― Kwon Yeo-Sun, Lemon

“Death turns us into junk. In the blink of an eye, we become meaningless, like scraps.”
― Kwon Yeo-Sun, Lemon

“But when she became hungry, everything changed. She became incapable of empathy, of putting herself in someone else’s shoes, and hardly considered another person or the smallest etiquette. In these situations, I had no choice but to wait until she filled her stomach. She seemed like an animal then, or even worse a sociopath, someone who could easily take a piece of bread from a starving child or elderly person. But once satiated, she emerged like an enlightened saint.”
― Kwon Yeo-Sun, Lemon

“Hadn’t Han Manu, with an iron in one hand and a crutch wedged under his other arm, been more alive than anyone in this world, more alive than the cancer cells that had spread to his lungs? Hadn’t my sister Hae-on—as she sat with her feet on the sofa or car seat, her knees spread with not a thought in her head, with absolutely no clue as to the inappropriateness of her actions—been warm and exquisitely alive, just like a bird about to take flight? Couldn’t each moment we’re living now be the meaning of life?”
― Kwon Yeo-Sun, Lemon

“Hadn’t Han Manu, with an iron in one hand and a crutch wedged under his
other arm, been more alive than anyone in this world, more alive than the
cancer cells that had spread to his lungs? Hadn’t my sister Hae-on—as she
sat with her feet on the sofa or car seat, her knees spread with not a thought
in her head, with absolutely no clue as to the inappropriateness of her
actions—been warm and exquisitely alive, just like a bird about to take
flight? Couldn’t each moment we’re living now be the meaning of life?”
― Kwon Yeo-sun, Lemon

“I imagine what happened inside one police interrogation room so many years ago.

He races across the intersection brimming with joy and terror, almost soaring into the radiant June dusk.”
― Kwon Yeo-Sun, Lemon