Kyung-sook Shin quotes

I was very young, and those events affected me deeply. I feel the time given to me doesn't belong only to me. In everything – my writing, my travelling, my happiness – I live partly on behalf of those who weren't able to survive. I feel I'm living their share of life. (Kyung-sook Shin)
People have lost something important they took for granted, and that loss leaves them devastated. View quote
Kyung-sook Shin
She is like a great writer, with the power to read people; I was influenced by her. But hers wasn't a life where you could sit indoors with books. View quote
Kyung-sook Shin
Even though each country has different cultural backgrounds and social traditions, the word "Mom” can evoke universal emotional responses. Additionally, the behavior of children is very similar across borders. Children's attitudes toward Mom and their tendency to forget her are similar all around the world... View quote
Kyung-sook Shin
People say that when a baby is crying the paternal grandmother will say, "The baby is crying, you should feed her," and the maternal grandmother will say, "Why is that baby crying so much, making her mom so tired? View quote
Kyung-sook Shin
You're paved in my heart like an old road. Like the pebbles in a pebble field, dirt in dirt, dust in dust, cobwebs in cobwebs. View quote
Kyung-sook Shin
If you only do what you like, who's going to do what you don't like? View quote
Kyung-sook Shin
Life demands sacrifice and difficult decisions from us at every moment. Living does not mean passing through a void of nothingness but rather through a web of relationships among beings, each with their own weight and volume and texture. View quote
Kyung-sook Shin
Life is sometimes amazingly fragile, but some lives are frighteningly strong. View quote
Kyung-sook Shin
Either a mother and daughter know each other very well or they are strangers. View quote
Kyung-sook Shin
Even though nobody knew that you were in my life, you were the person who brought a raft at every rapid current and helped me cross that water safely. I was happy that you were there. I came to tell you I was able to travel through my life because I could come to you when I was anxious, not when I was happy. (Kyung-sook Shin)
How can you live without trusting people? There are more people who are good than people who are bad! View quote
Kyung-sook Shin
Only after Mom went missing did you realize that her stories were piled inside you, in endless stacks. Mom's everyday life used to go on in a repeating loop, without a break. Her everyday words, which you didn't think deeply about and sometimes dismissed as useless when she was with you, awoke in your heart, creating tidal waves. View quote
Kyung-sook Shin
All I wanted was for you to be free from everything. And with that freedom, you often showed me another world, so I wanted you to be even freer. I wanted you to be so free that you would live your life for other people. View quote
Kyung-sook Shin
...I have so many dreams of my own, and I remember things from my childhood, from when I was a girl and a young woman, and I haven't forgotten a thing. So why did we think of Mom as a mom from the very beginning? She didn't have the opportunity to pursue her dreams, and all by herself, faced everything the era dealt her, poverty and sadness, and she couldn't do anything about her very bad lot in life other than suffer through it and get beyond it and live her life to the very best of her ability, giving her body and her heart to it completely. Why did I never give a thought to Mom's dreams? View quote
Kyung-sook Shin
You realize that you habitually thought of Mom when something in your life was not going well, because when you thought of her it was as though something got back on track, and you felt re-energized. View quote
Kyung-sook Shin