“The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure. She had believed in her own inherent goodness, her humanity, and lived accordingly, never causing anyone harm. Her devotion to doing things the right way had been unflagging, all her successes had depended on it, and she would have gone on like that indefinitely. She didn't understand why, but faced with those decaying buildings and straggling grasses, she was nothing but a child who had never lived.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“Why, is it such a bad thing to die?”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“Time was a wave, almost cruel in its relentlessness”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“She was no longer able to cope with all that her sister reminded her of. She'd been unable to forgive her for soaring alone over a boundary she herself could never bring herself to cross, unable to forgive that magnificent irresponsibility that had enabled Yeong-hye to shuck off social constraints and leave her behind, still a prisoner. And before Yeong-hye had broken those bars, she'd never even known they were there.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“I want to swallow you, have you melt into me and flow through my veins.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“She's a good woman, he thought. The kind of woman whose goodness is oppressive.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“When a person undergoes such a drastic transformation, there's simply nothing anyone else can do but sit back and let them get on with it.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“Life is such a strange thing, she thinks, once she has stopped laughing. Even after certain things have happened to them, no matter how awful the experience, people still go on eating and drinking, going to the toilet and washing themselves - living, in other words. And sometimes they even laugh out loud. And they probably have these same thoughts, too, and when they do it must make them cheerlessly recall all the sadness they'd briefly managed to forget.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“This was the body of a beautiful young woman, conventionally an object of desire, and yet it was a body from which all desire had been eliminated. But this was nothing so crass as carnal desire, not for her—rather, or so it seemed, what she had renounced was the very life that her body represented.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“This was the body of a beautiful young woman, conventionally an object of desire, and yet it was a body from which all desire had been eliminated.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“The pain feels like a hole swallowing her up, a source of intense fear and yet, at the same time, a strange, quiet peace.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“Look, sister, I'm doing a handstand; leaves are growing out of my body, roots are sprouting out of my hands...they delve down into the earth. Endlessly, endlessly...yes, I spread my legs because I wanted flowers to bloom from my crotch; I spread them wide...”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“Yells and howls, threaded together layer upon layer, are enmeshed to form that lump. Because of meat. I ate too much meat. The lives of the animals I ate have all lodged there. Blood and flesh, all those butchered bodies are scattered in every nook and cranny, and though the physical remnants were excreted, their lives still stick stubbornly to my insides.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“Sister,” Yeong-hye said, her voice low and calm as if intending to comfort her. Yeong-hye’s old black sweater gave off the faint scent of mothballs. When In-hye didn’t answer, Yeong-hye whispered one more time. “Sister…all the trees of the world are like brothers and sisters.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“Or perhaps it was simply that things were happening inside her, terrible things, which no one else could even guess at, and thus it was impossible for her to engage with everyday life at the same time. If so, she would naturally have no energy left, not just for curiosity or interest but indeed for any meaningful response to all the humdrum minutiae that went on on the surface.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“Such uncanny serenity actually frightened him, making him think that perhaps this was a surface impression left behind after any amount of unspeakable viciousness had been digested, or else settled down inside her as a kind of sediment.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“There's nothing wrong with keeping quiet, after all, hadn't women traditionally been expected to be demure and restrained?”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“the sight of her lying there utterly without resistance, yet armored by the power of her own renunciation, was so intense as to bring tears to his eyes.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“For the first time, she became vividly aware of how much of her life she had spent with her husband. It had been a period of time utterly devoid of happiness and spontaneity. A time that she'd so far managed to get through only by using up every last reserve of perseverance and consideration. All of it self-inflicted.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“Her life was no more than a ghostly pageant of exhausted endurance, no more real than a television drama. Death, who now stood by her side, was as familiar to her as a family member, missing for a long time but now returned.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“Perhaps the only things he truly loved were his images—those he’d filmed, or then again, perhaps only those he had yet to film.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“Can only trust my breasts now. I like my breasts, nothing can be killed by them. Hand, foot, tongue, gaze, all weapons from which nothing is safe. But not my breasts. With my round breasts, I’m okay. Still okay. So why do they keep on shrinking? Not even round anymore. Why? Why am I changing like this? Why are my edges all sharpening–what am I going to gouge”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“Only Yeong-hye, docile and naive, had been unable to deflect their father's temper or put up any form of resistance. Instead, she had merely absorbed all her suffering inside her, deep into the marrow of her bones. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, In-hye could see that the role that she had adopted back then of the hard-working, self-sacrificing eldest daughter had been a sign not of maturity but of cowardice. It had been a survival tactic.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“It called to mind something ancient, something pre-evolutionary, or else perhaps a mark of photosynthesis, and he realized to his surprise that there was nothing at all sexual about it; it was more vegetal than sexual.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“As for women who were pretty, intelligent, strikingly sensual, the daughters of rich families—they would only have served to disrupt my carefully ordered existence”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“Time was a wave, almost cruel in its relentlessness as it whisked her life downstream, a life she had to constantly strain to keep from breaking apart.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“I was convinced that there was more going on here than a simple case of vegetarianism.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“It melted in the rain ... it all melted ... I'd been just about to go down into the earth. There was nothing else for it if I wanted to turn myself upside down again, you see.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
“It seemed enough for her to just deal with whatever it was that came her way, calmly and without fuss.”
― Han Kang, quote from The Vegetarian
Han Kang
Born place: in Gwangju, Korea, Republic of
Born date November 27, 1970
See more on GoodReads
“ When You Are Old
When you are old and grey and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.”
― W.B. Yeats, quote from The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
“His cheeks were slick with tears that spilled over his diamond eyes, a ceaseless flow he neither noticed nor appeared to care about. And she had a feeling it was going to be a while before the leaking stopped-an inner artery had been nicked and this was the blood of his heart, spilling out of him, covering him.”
― J.R. Ward, quote from Lover Unleashed
“And if you don't spend every second outdoors, people think there's someting wrong with you.”
― Jeff Kinney, quote from Diary of a Wimpy Kid
“So why did you want to kiss me?"
"We're friends aren't we?" Callum shrugged.
I relaxed into a smile. "Of course we are."
"And if you can't kiss your friends who can you kiss?" Callum smiled.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“Sean reaches between us and slides a thin bracelet of red ribbons over my free hand. Lifting my arm, he presses his lips against the inside of my wrist. I'm utterly still; I feel my pulse tap several times against his lips, and then he releases my hand.
"For luck," he says. He takes Dove's lead from me.
"Sean," I say, and he turns. I take his chin and kiss his lips, hard. I'm reminded, all of a sudden, of that first day on the beach, when I pulled his head from the water.
"For luck," I say to his startled face.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from The Scorpio Races
Genghis Khan and the...
Lizzie Bright and th...
For the Roses
The E-Myth Revisited...
Structure and Interp...
A Land RememberedBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
