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Human Acts Quotes

Browse 151 quotes about Human Acts.

Human Acts Quotes

“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.”

Human ActsKang Han
Book:Human Acts
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“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 ActsKang Han
Book:Human Acts
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“But now, each time I fall asleep, and each time I wake up again, I see those faces. Their pale skin, their closed mouths, their legs stretched out straight...it's so clear, so vivid, it's like they're really there. Just like the face of the man with blood dripping from his jaw, his eyes half closed...etched into the insides of my eyelids. Inside, where I can't get at it. Where I'll never be able to scrape it off.”

Human ActsKang Han
Book:Human Acts
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“Up Rising You're not like me, Seong-hee. You believe in a divine being, and in this thing we call humanity. You never did manage to win me over. I could never believe in the existence of a being who watches over us with consummate love. I couldn't even make it through the Lord's Prayer without the words drying up in my throat. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. I forgive no one, and no one forgives me.”

Human ActsKang Han
Book:Human Acts
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“As she silently chewed the grains of rice, it occurred to her, as it had before, that there was something shameful about eating. Gripped by this familiar shame, she thought of the dead, for whom the absence of life meant they would never be hungry again. But life still lingered on for her, with hunger still a yoke around her neck. It was that which had tormented her for the past five years—that she could still feel hunger, still salivate at the sight of food.”

Human ActsKang Han
Book:Human Acts
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“After you died I couldn't hold a funeral, so my life became a funeral. After you were wrapped in a tarpaulin and carted away in a garbage truck. After sparkling jets of water sprayed unforgivably from the fountain. Everywhere the lights of the temple shrines are burning. In the flowers that bloom in spring, in the snowflakes. In the evenings that draw each day to a close. Sparks from the candles, burning in empty drinks bottles”

Human ActsKang Han
Book:Human Acts
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