David

“If you’re going to write about love, write it in pencil.”
― Han Yujoo, The Impossible Fairy Tale

“I wonder about the collective soul of the widespread and artificially constructed new tribe known as the ‘city dweller’, who is no longer a part of any traditional society or race, and has never at any time held spiritual or religious beliefs which arise from any geographic specificity, or at least beliefs which are current only in a specific region, given that, even in regions where such beliefs had once held sway, the degree and duration of industrialisation meant not only that shamanism had lost its power but that access to collective memories of it had been completely cut off, with each individual inextricably bound up with things that would once have been foreign to them, psychological differences flattened, made to conform to an international standard now long accepted, a globally-current ‘enlightened’ standard that is considered the only one of value; the modern city dweller who has thus lost no few of their native, traditional, mythical elements, which defy explanation; the modern city dweller in whom the majority of us can now recognise ourselves.”
― Bae Suah, Recitation

“Every beautiful thing cracks and shatters and collapses and crumples and bleeds. If not now, it will eventually.”
― Han Yujoo, The Impossible Fairy Tale

“and if she retreats from your indifference or from a smile or gesture you may have let slip, don’t spit on her footprints as if she were bad luck—even if she blocks your path for a moment, even if you feel a blind urge to escape your predicament by assaulting her, knocking her down, stomping on her, strangling her, disposing of her without a trace. Because even if you do all this, many other girls will notice a young man like you. Traumatized and deranged, they will follow you, crying “Brother!”
― Ch'oe Yun, There a Petal Silently Falls: Three Stories by Ch'oe Yun