Human Acts Quotes

“Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves the single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, slaughtered - is this the essential of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable?”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“The thread of life is as tough as an ox tendon, so even after I lost you, it had to go on. I had to make myself eat, make myself work, forcing down each day like a mouthful of cold rice, even if it stuck in my throat.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“Even if the victim dies, even if their body is cremated, leaving nothing but the charred remains of bone, that substance cannot be obliterated.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“More than clear enough. How your face looked that last time, right before the lid was put on the coffin. How ashen it was, how haggard. I'd never realized you were so deathly pale.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“It's the soldiers, not him, that your death should have weighed on, so why did he grow so old before his time, so much quicker than all his friends? Is he still troubled by thoughts of revenge? Whenever I think this, my heart sinks.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“Even now, when he laughs and reveals those two front teeth, broad and flat as a rabbit's, the look of youthful innocence they give him clashes with the lines etched deeply around his eyes.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“Who would've though that such a sweet, sensitive boy as that would end up scrapping with your middle brother? That now, more than twenty years down the line, they'd find it so painful even to be in the same room, barely able to exchange more than a handful of words?”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“Only the young can be so stubborn, so decisive in the face of their own fear.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“For God's sake," I begged, "let me inside. Or just tell my son we're here. Tell him to come out, just for a moment."
Your brother couldn't stand by any longer; he declared that he'd go and fetch you out himself, but one of the militiamen shook his head.
"If you go in now, that's it, we can't let you back out again. Everyone who's stayed behind has decided to do so at their own risk. They're all prepared to die if they have to."
When your brother raised his voice to say that he understood and was prepared to go in anyway, I quickly cut him off.
"There's no need," I said, "Dong-ho'll come home as soon as he gets the chance. He made a promise...."
I said it because it was so dark all around us, because I was imagining soldiers springing out of the darkness at any moment. Because I was afraid of losing yet another son.
And that was how I lost you.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“After your brothers have come and gone my days seem that much emptier, and I mostly just sit out on the veranda warming myself in the sun.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“The big chunks of granite made it prime territory for hide-and-seek, for shouting "the hibiscus has bloomed" at the top of their voices.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“There was something comforting about the sight of you and Jeong-dae heading off to school in your identical uniforms, side by side like two peas in a pod.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“When the bodies were exumed and moved to new graves, the families of the missing set up small cenotaphs; your middle brother went expressly to look for the two kids' names, but apparently they weren't there. If their father had still been alive, surely he would have set up a pair of cenotaphs for them?”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“How pretty she was...how pretty, I thought, to have vanished without a trace.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“That lovely young girl stepping into our house with her arms wrapped around the laundry basket, padding across our yard in her sneakers, with her toothbrush dripping water. Such things seem like the dreams of a previous life.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“I'd known about the meetings for bereaved families for some time, of course, but I'd never shown my face there. When I eventually did go, it was because I'd received a phone call from a woman calling herself their representative. Our military thug of a president is coming here to Gwangju, she told me, that butcher dares to set foot in our city...when your spilled blood had barely had time to dry.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“Death would have been welcome at that point, so what could there possibly have been to fear?”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“But I don't have a map for whatever world lies beyond death. I don't know whether there, too, there are meetings and partings, whether we still have faces and voices, hearts with the capacity for joy as well as sorrow. How could I tell whether your father's loosening grip on life was something I ought to pity, or to envy?”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“I don't like summer but I like summer nights": that was something you came out with the year you turned eight. I liked the sound of those words, and I remember thinking to myself, he'll be a poet.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“You disliked the shadowed places where the trees blocked out the sun. When I wanted to walk there to escape the heat, you tugged me by the wrist as hard as you could, back to where it was bright. Even though your fine hair sparkled with sweat, and you were panting so hard you sounded as if you were in pain. Let's walk over there, Mum, where it's sunny, we might as well, right? Pretending that you were too strong for me, I let you pull me along. It's sunny over there, Mum, and there's lots of flowers, too. Why are we walking in the dark, let's go over there, where the flowers are blooming.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“At the weekends when the two of you played badminton in the yard and the shuttlecock inevitably flew over the wall and onto the building site, your game of rock-paper-scissors to decide which of you would go and fetch it never failed to make me smile.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“...groping through memories for some sense of familiarity.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“The traces of infancy still lingered in the soft line of his jaw. It was a face so utterly ordinary you could easily have mistaken it for that of another, a face whose characteristics would be forgotten the moment you turned away from it.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“When I passed my hand over my face my palm came away glistening; I hadn't even been aware that I was crying.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“How could I stop it from happening? The person who had told me all this had disappeared somewhere, and I was standing in the middle of the street clutching my cell phone, totally at a loss. Should I call someone official, some kind of authority, and let them know what was about to take place? Even once I'd informed them, would they be able to stop it from going ahead? Why had this knowledge come to me of all people, someone who had no power whatsoever? Where should I go, how can I...as these words were smoldering inside my mouth, my eyes snapped open. Another dream. Just a dream.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“There was something shockingly incongruous about the people there, their flamboyant clothes, the way they were laughing as though nothing was wrong. How was such a scene possible, when so many people had died?”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“I'm waiting. No one is going to come, but still I wait. No one even knows I'm here, but I'm waiting all the same.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“Acts of violence committed in broad daylight, without hesitation and without regret. Commanding officers who would have encouraged, no even demanded such displays of brutality.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“I read an interview with someone who had been tortured; they described the aftereffects as "similar to those experienced by victims of radioactive poisoning." Radioactive matter lingers for decades in muscle and bone, causing chromosomes to mutate. Cells turn cancerous, life attacks itself.”
― Kang Han, Human Acts

“How had the seasons kept on turning for me, when time had stopped forever for him that May?”
― Kang Han, Human Acts