Alexandra Lin > Alexandra's Quotes

“But I grew up not knowing the difference between a bearable life and an unbearable life, and by the time I discovered there was such a thing, it was too late.”
― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face

“I AM GLAD, then, that I will never love someone again in this way. I would not survive a second time. In America, one of my professors said once that the best art comes from an unbearable life – if you live through it, that is.”
― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face

“Sometimes, when he is holding me and I feel like I am liquid in his arms, I wonder if anything else in my life will seem real after this. It is as if I traveled beyond the earth and reached out and touched a burning star, and it is both endurable and terrifying.”
― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face

“The only gentlemen I ever see are in those dramas on TV. Those men are kind. They protect you and cry and stand up to their families for you”
― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face

“Speaking of those hoity-toity doctors and pharmacists who run their clinics in districts like Miari and profit off the working girls and their sicknesses—they are no better than the gutter trash who come around selling lubricants and “handmade” dresses to the girls to wear in our glass showrooms that light up red in the night.”
― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face

“IN THE ORIGINAL STORY, the little mermaid endures unspeakable pain to gain her human legs. The Sea Witch warns her that her new feet will feel as if she is walking on whetted blades, but she will be able to dance like no human has ever danced before. And so she drinks the witch’s potion, which slices through her body like a sword.
What I want to say, is that she danced divinely with her beautiful legs, even through the pain of a thousand knives. She was able to walk and run and stay close to her beloved prince, and even when things didn’t work out with him, that wasn’t the point.
And in the end, after she said goodbye to her prince and flung herself into the sea, expecting to disintegrate into sea foam, she was carried away by the children of light and air.
ISN’T THAT a beautiful story?”
― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face

“One day, years after we stop living together, I will embark on a Kyuri series. I know that with absolute certainty. I cannot start now, when I am in the midst of my Ruby series, nor while I am still living with Kyuri. I need time and distance between us. But this is why I relish living with Kyuri now. I am spoon-feeding the muse that lives in a well deep inside of my brain--hearing Kyuri's stories, watching her drink to oblivion every weekend, obsessing over her face and her body and her clothes and her bags. I take photos of her and her things whenever I can. I will need them to remember her by. The other girls too, I have glimmers of them lurking in the outer regions of my mind; Sujin's terrifying transformation, and dear, silent Ara and her antediluvian upbringing. I will take years, though, before I can commit them to paper or form.

As for Hanbin, I don't need Kyuri or Hanbin's mother to know that he will not be my salvation.”
― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face

“I am glad then that I will never love someone again in this way. I would not survive a second time.”
― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face

“I know, because I was in love with a poor man once. He could not pay to spend time with me and I could not afford to spend time with him.”
― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face

“I want them to think I’m stupid,” she said to me once. “No expectation is nice. It gives you a lot of time to think.”
― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face

“When something was strange, everyone thought they had the right to come stomping in all over your life to figure out why.”
― Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman

“I find the shape of people’s eyes particularly interesting when they’re being condescending. I see a wariness or a fear of being contradicted or sometimes a belligerent spark ready to jump on any attack.”
― Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman

“The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of.”
― Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman

“I wished I was back in the convenience store where I was valued as a working member of staff and things weren’t as complicated as this. Once we donned our uniforms, we were all equals regardless of gender, age, or nationality— all simply store workers.”
― Sayaka Murata, コンビニ人間 [Konbini ningen]

“When you work in a convenience store, people often look down on you for working there. I find this fascinating, and I like to look them in the face when they do this to me. And as i do so I always think: that's what a human is.”
― Sayaka Murata, コンビニ人間 [Konbini ningen]

“The sensation that the world is slowly dying feels good.”
― Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman

“Deep down I wanted some kind of change. Any change, whether good or bad, would be better than the state of impasse I was in now.”
― Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman

“When I can’t sleep, I think about the transparent glass box that is still stirring with life even in the darkness of night. That pristine aquarium is still operating like clockwork. As I visualize the scene, the sounds of the store reverberate in my eardrums and lull me to sleep.”
― Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman

“Maybe people who thought they were being violated felt a bit better when they attacked other people in the same way.”
― Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman

“The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects.”
― Sayaka Murata, コンビニ人間 [Konbini ningen]

“I know better than to take life directions from someone without a moral compass.”
― Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer

“It’s because she is beautiful, you know. That’s all it is. They don’t really care about the rest of it. She gets a pass at life.”
― Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer

“It takes a whole lot longer to dispose of a body than to dispose of a soul, especially if you don’t want to leave any evidence of foul play.”
― Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer

“Love is not a weed, It cannot grow where it please…”
― Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer

“I don't miss him anymore. Most of the time, anyway. I want to. I wish I could but unfortunately, it's true: time does heal. It will do so whether you like it or not, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. If you're not careful, time will take away everything that ever hurt you, everything you have lost, and replace it with knowledge. Time is a machine: it will convert your pain into experience... It will force you to move on and you will not have a choice in the matter.”
― Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

“Why do you lie so much? And about the weirdest little things?", my mother always asked me. "I don’t know", I always said. But I did know. It was very simple. Because it was a better story.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“But I wasn't listening. I wasn't stopping. Because we were already running away again, me and my imagination.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“The poets brace themselves for imminent, overeducated poverty.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“They laugh. What’s so fucking funny? I want to say. But I don’t. I laugh with them. Ha. Haha. Hahaha.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“I look at all of my dreams and nightmares distilled into one man-shaped shape. All the love and hate I have in my heart plus one fucking bunny.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny