Theresa Hak Kyung Cha > Quotes

“Why resurrect it all now. From the Past. History, the old wound. The past emotions all over again. To confess to relive the same folly. To name it now so as not to repeat history in oblivion. To extract each fragment by each fragment from the word from the image another word another image the reply that will not repeat history in oblivion.”
― Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

“I have the documents. Documents, proof, evidence, photograph, signature. One day you raise your right hand and you are American. They give you an American Pass port. The United States of America. Somewhere someone has taken my identity and replaced it with their photograph. The other one. Their signature their seals. Their own image. And you learn the executive branch the legislative branch and the third. Justice. Judicial branch. It makes the difference The rest is past.”
― Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee

“There is no destination other than towards yet another refuge from yet another war. Many generations pass and many deceptions in the sequence in the chronology towards the destination.”
― Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee

“If words are to be uttered, they would be from behind the partition. Unaccountable is distance, time to transport from this present minute.

If words are to be sounded, impress through the partition in ever slight measure to the other side the other signature the other hearing the other speech the other grasp.”
― Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

“To the others, these accounts are about (one more) distant land, like (any other) distant land, without any discernable features in the narrative, (all the same) distant like any other.”
― Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee

“We are severed in Two by an abstract enemy an invisible enemy under the title of liberators who have conveniently named the severance, Civil War. Cold War. Stalemate.”
― Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee

“The ink spills thickest before it runs dry before it stops writing at all.”
― Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee

“Acquiesce, to the messenger. Acquiesce, to and for the complot in the Hieratic tongue. Theirs. Into Their tongue, the counterscript, my confession in Theirs. Into Theirs. To scribe to make hear the words, to make sound the words, the words, the words made flesh.”
― Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee

“O Muse, tell me the story
Of all these things, O Goddess, daughter of Zeus
Beginning wherever you wish, tell even us.”
― Theresa Hak Kyung Cha