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Quote by Kang Han

“Everything that has lost the life it once had will rapidly putrefy.”

Quote by Kang Han

Book:Human Acts

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“A foul stench will waft in waves from every alley where rubbish has been dumped.”

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“To wrap them in the Taegukgi—we wanted to do that much for them, at least. We needed the national anthem for the same reason we needed the minute's silence. To make the corpses we were singing over into something more than butchered lumps of meat.”

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“The door leading back to that summer has been slammed shut; you've made sure of that. But that means that the way is also closed that might have led back to the time before. There is no way back to the world before the torture. No way back to the world before the massacre.”

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Source: Human Acts

“Some weekend afternoon when the sun-drenched scene outside the window seems unusually still and Dong-ho's profile fits into your mind, mighn't the thing flickering in front of your eyes be what they call a soul? In the early hours of the morning, when dreams you can't remember have left your cheeks wet and the contours of that face jolt into an abrupt clarity, mighn't that wavering be a soul's emergence?”

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“Don't die. Just don't die.”

Human Acts Kang Han

Book:Human Acts

Source: Human Acts

“I can't get my head around why I didn't just call your name that day. Why I just came tottering on behind, struggling for breath and dumb as a mute. If I call your name next time, will you please just turn around? You don't need to say "Yes, Mum?" or anything like that. Just turn round so I can see you.”

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Book:Human Acts

Source: Human Acts

“At the time, death seemed as though it would be something refreshing, like slipping on that clean new uniform. If life was the summer that had just gone by, if life was a body sullied with sweat and bloody pus, clotted seconds that refused to pass, if life was a mouthful of sour bean sprouts that only served to intensify the hunger pangs, then perhaps death would be like a clean brushstroke, erasing all such things in a single sweep.”

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Book:Human Acts

Source: Human Acts

“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.”

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Book:Human Acts

Source: Human Acts

“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.”

Human Acts Kang Han

Book:Human Acts

Source: Human Acts