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Quote by Kang Han

“That was what captured me, what has stayed with me ever since. Have you even known it, professor—that terrifying intensity, that feeling as if you yourself have undergone some kind of alchemy, been purified, made wholly virtuous? The brilliance of that moment, the dazzling purity of conscience.”

Quote by Kang Han

Book:Human Acts

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“The sound woke me up, but I didn't have the courage to open my eyes, so I kept them closed and strained to listen in the darkness.”

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“I prayed every night. I don't mean anything formal, I'd never been a regular at any temple or church. I just asked to be set free from that hell. But they were answered, you see, my prayers were answered.”

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“At the time, you were more closely acquainted than most with brutalized corpses, yet there have only been a handful of times in the past twenty-odd years when your dreams have been vivid with blood. Rather, your nightmares tend to be cold, silent affairs. Scenes from which the blood has dried without a trace, and the bones have weathered into ash.”

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“The day I stood shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of thousands of my fellow civilians, staring down the barrels of the soldiers' guns, the day the bodies of those first two slaughtered were placed in a handcart and pushed at the head of the column. I was startled to discover an absence inside myself: the absence of fear. I remember feeling that it was all right to die; I felt the blood of a hundred thousand hearts surging together into one enormous artery, fresh and clean...the sublime enormity of a single heart, pulsing blood through that vessel and into my own. I dared to feel a part of it.”

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Book:Human Acts

Source: Human Acts

“Out of the corner of my eye I could see blood silently seeping from people I'd been speaking with mere moments before.”

Human Acts Kang Han

Book:Human Acts

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“...make this body disappear, please, for God's sake, just wipe it off the face of the earth.”

Human Acts Kang Han

Book:Human Acts

Source: Human Acts

“As we each inquired how the other had been, something like transparent feelers reached tentatively out from our eyes, confirming the shadows held by the other's face, the track marks of suffering that no amount of forced jollity could paper over.”

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Book:Human Acts

Source: Human Acts

“Burdened by nightmares and insomnia, numbed by painkillers and sleeping pills, we were no longer young. There was no longer anyone who would worry over us or shed tears over our pitiful lot. We even despised ourselves.”

Human Acts Kang Han

Book:Human Acts

Source: Human Acts

“Looking at that boy's life, Jin-su said, what is this thing we call a soul? Just some nonexistent idea? Or something that might as well not exist? Or no, is it like a kind of glass? Glass is transparent, right? And fragile. That's the fundamental nature of glass. And that's why objects that are made of glass have to be handled with care. After all, if they end up smashed or cracked or chipped, then they're good for nothing, right, you just have to chuck them away. Before, we used to have a kind of glass that couldn't be broken. A truth so hard and clear it might as well have been made of glass. So when you think about it, it was only when we were shattered that we proved we had souls. That what we really were was humans made of glass.”

Human Acts Kang Han

Book:Human Acts

Source: Human Acts

“Of course, he and I were close in some senses, but think about it; how close could we really have been? Yes, we relied on each other, but we also wanted to smash each other's face in. To erase each other's very existence. To thrust each other permanently out of sight.”

Human Acts Kang Han

Book:Human Acts

Source: Human Acts