Greek Lessons Quotes

“If snow is the silence that falls from the sky, perhaps rain is an endless sentence.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“You said, This thing we call life mustn’t ever become something endured.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“Do you ever wonder at the strangeness of it? That our bodies have eyelids and lips, that they can at times be made to close from the outside, and at other times to lock fast from within.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“You said, Beauty is only that which is intense, has a vibrant energy.
You said, This thing we call life mustn't ever become something endured.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“To her, there was no touch as instantaneous and intuitive as the gaze. It was close to being the only way of touching without touch.
Language, by comparison, is an infinitely more physical way to touch. It moves lungs and throat and tongue and lips, it vibrates the air as it wings its way to the listener. The tongue grows dry, saliva spatters, the lips crack. When she found that physical process too much to bear, she became paradoxically more verbose.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“Me aterra el silencio del espacio por el que se expande mi voz. Me aterra no poder enmendar las palabras una vez pronunciadas, que esas palabras sepan mucho más de lo que yo sé.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“No lo puedo entender. Tú eres el que ha muerto, pero siento que todo me abandona. Tú eres el que ha muerto, pero son mis recuerdos los que sangran, se manchan, se oxidan y resquebrajan.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“Si tomamos como cierta la premisa que dice que, cuando perdemos algo, ganamos otra cosa, ¿Qué es lo que he ganado yo al perderte a ti?”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“Falling in love is like being haunted”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“Desde que ha perdido el habla, todos los paisajes se convierten en fragmentos rotos de aristas definidas, como los papelitos de colores del caleidoscopio que cambian silenciosa y repetidamente de forma, cual infinitos pétalos fríos.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“Do you ever wonder at the strangeness of it?

That our bodies have eyelids and lips,

that they can at times be made to close from the outside,
and at other times to lock fast from within.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“The world is an illusion, and living is dreaming, it read: How is that dream so vivid? How does blood flow and hot tears gush forth?”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“If only she’d made a map of the route her tears used to take. If only she’d used a needle to engrave pinpricks, or even just traces of blood, over the route where the words used to flow. But, she mutters, from a place deeper than tongue and throat, that was too terrible a route.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“A person lies prone in the snow.
Snow in their throat.
Earth in their eyes.
Seeing nothing.

A person stands next to them.
Hearing nothing.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“Pronto llegará el día en que no podré distinguir mi reflejo en el espejo de todo lo demás. Todos los rostros que recuerdo se quedarán congelados en mi memoria.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“The sadness of the human body. The human body, with its many indented, tender, vulnerable parts. I realized something with armpits. The chest.The groin. A body born to embrace someone, to desire to embrace someone.
I should have embraced you as hard as I could, at least once before that period of our lives passed us by.
It wouldn't have hurt or harmed me to do so.
I would have withstood it, survived it.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“In the part that argues everything has within it that which harms it, he uses the example of how the inflammation of the eye ruins the eye and blinds it, and how rust ruins iron and completely shatters it. Why, then, isn't the human soul, which is analogous to such things, ruined by its foolish, bad attributes?”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“Who would be best able to think about life? Someone who faces death at every turn, someone who, for that reason, is inevitably thinking of death, always, necessarily, urgently”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“It’s a common belief that blind or partially sighted people will pick up on sounds first and foremost, but that isn’t the case with me. The first thing I perceive is time. I sense it as a slow, cruel current of enormous mass passing constantly through my body to gradually overcome me.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“Me aterra no poder enmendar las palabras una vez pronunciadas, que esas palabras sepan mucho más de lo que yo sé.”
― Han Kang, La clase de griego

“language as cold and hard as a pillar of ice. A language that does not wait to be combined with any other prior to use, a supremely self-sufficient language. A language that can part the lips only after irrevocably determining causality and manner.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“Los fragmentos de la memoria se mueven y crean formas. Lo hacen sin un patrón, sin plan ni sentido alguno. Se dispersan y, de pronto, se unen con determinación. Parecen incontables mariposas dejando de aletear al mismo tiempo, parecen bailarinas imprevisibles con los rostros cubiertos.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“She knows that no single specific experience led to her loss of language.

Language worn ragged over thousands of years, from wear and tear by countless tongues and pens. Language worn ragged over the course of her life, by her own tongue and pen. Each time she tried to begin a sentence, she could feel her aged heart. Her patched and repatched, dried-up, expressionless heart. The more keenly she felt it, the more fiercely she clasped the words. Until all at once, her grip slackened. The dulled fragments dropped to her feet. The saw-toothed cogs stopped turning. A part of her, the place within her that had been worn down from hard endurance, fell away like flesh, like soft tofu dented by a spoon.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“¿Por qué me acerqué a ti de esa manera tan estúpida? Puede que mi amor no fuera estúpido, pero como yo sí lo era, se contaminó de mi estupidez. O quizá yo no era tan estúpido, pero la estupidez inherente al amor despertó la estupidez que había en mí y terminó por arruinarlo todo.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“The world is an illusion, and living is dreaming,” I muttered. Yet blood runs and tears gush forth.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“There is evil in this world, and it causes the suffering of innocent people. If God is good but unable to redress this, he is impotent. If God is not good and merely omnipotent, and does not redress these things, he is evil. If God is neither good nor omnipotent, he cannot be called God. Therefore the real existence of a good and omnipotent God is an impossible fallacy.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“The beautiful is beautiful.
The beautiful is noble.
The beautiful is difficult.”
― Han Kang, Greek Lessons

“En este mundo existen la maldad y el sufrimiento y mueren muchos inocentes. Si Dios es bueno pero no puede corregir esa situación, es un ser impotente. Si Dios no es bueno y solo es omnipotente, entonces es un ser malvado. Si Dios no es ni bueno ni omnipotente, entonces no es Dios. En consecuencia, la existencia de un Dios bueno y omnipotente es una falacia.”
― Han Kang, La clase de griego

“«El mundo es una ilusión y la vida es un sueño», podía leerse: «Pero ¿cómo es posible que sea tan nítido ese sueño? ¿Cómo puede ser un sueño si mana la sangre y brotan las lágrimas calientes?».”
― Han Kang, La clase de griego

“—El mundo es una ilusión y la vida es un sueño —murmuré para mis adentros.”
― Han Kang, La clase de griego