“Time is passing, I'm still standing here, and people are putting all sorts of labels on me...I couldn't avoid any of that as long as I lived, but maybe there was one last part of me that only I could define. And if that part joined another part that even I nor anyone else could ever define, then my yesterday and today can be created from there.”
Source: Beyond The Story: 10-Year Record of BTS
“Until then, my image of pop stars were just "pop stars." The people I grew up listening to and admiring. It's only right to be fascinated. I had this fantasy that they would be very different from me. But then, I learned they really weren't. On the outside, they ride expensive cars, wear gold chains, and have fancy parties every day. But a lot of it turned out to be just part of the business. It was "work" for them, in other words. And if they couldn't afford the cars or jewelry, they would rent them to show them off. There was, shall we say, a shattering. My fantasies were just shattered.”
Source: Beyond The Story: 10-Year Record of BTS
“I don't know. It's not just like it's a single moment...I was just grateful and sorry and thankful and swept up in a thousand emotions.”
Source: Beyond The Story: 10-Year Record of BTS
“... nothing in Nature is black or white, few solutions are clean and clear; rather, reality, and especially our models of it, possess shades of gray throughout.”
Source: Epic of Evolution: Seven Ages of the Cosmos
“The desert I've been struggling through without you makes me thirsty
So hold me already
I know that without you the ocean will be just like a desert”
Source: Beyond The Story: 10-Year Record of BTS
“For example, when we practiced dance, some of the members would instantly master a move I would need several repetitions to get. I would get dejected. 'Wow, those guys are so talented. We're in the same classes, but how could they be so much better?”
Source: Beyond The Story: 10-Year Record of BTS
“What am I going to do, except accept it. Our schedule was so packed that it was a matter of, 'Is my body going to break first, or my mind?' And my body was so tired, my mind did not have the strength to be anxious, even.”
Source: Beyond The Story: 10-Year Record of BTS
“On what he was like as a trainee, V remembered himself less as a person who did his best unconditionally and more as someone who had to "like" something to do it. He needed, therefore, the leisure to recharge and take stock just as much as he needed practice to improve. He referred to this as "the adolescence of the mind," which could be interpreted as the determination to attain personal happiness over material "success."
I tell myself a lot that I will become a better person. But I think I have to become happy myself first or somehow receive a kind of energy in order to take a step closer to becoming that better person. It's the same when I'm inspired. In the beginning of the pandemic, when our entire schedule was canceled and we could rest a bit, I suddenly had this craving to see the ocean at night. So I went with an old school friend to Sokcho in the middle of the night. We lit sparklers, recorded the sound of the ocean, and tried writing songs over the recordings of the night waves. Seeing the ocean at night when I really wanted to see it as opposed to when I really didn't was incredibly different. When my heart is satisfied this way, I take note of the emotions that come to me and write them down.”
Source: Beyond The Story: 10-Year Record of BTS
“Whether you're under pressure or not, what you really need to prepare is your heart. Thinking about this and that will only make you too anxious to do even the things you're good at doing. Let go of the pressure, put behind yourself all that you've done before, and get up on that stage with just one thing, your heart.”
Source: Beyond The Story: 10-Year Record of BTS
“The stages and performances were something we really wanted to do and now we were doing it, but our schedule was just so harsh...Afraid our affection for the work would diminish, that it would become simply "work," we all decided, "Let's take a little time for ourselves.”
Source: Beyond The Story: 10-Year Record of BTS