"People are rotten everywhere you go. They’re no good. You want to see a very bad man? Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination. Let’s see how good he is when he can do whatever he wants." - P41
Yet she crammed her mind the way she might have overfilled a pig intestine with blood sausage stuffing. She tried hard to figure things out because she didn’t want him to think she was ignorant. Sunja didn’t know her letters in either Korean or Japanese. Her father had taught her some addition and subtraction so she could count money, but that was all. Both she and her mother could not even write their names. - P42
Hansu moved toward her. She could smell his soap and the wintergreen of his hair wax. He was cleanly shaven and handsome. She loved how white his clothes were. Why did such a thing matter? The men at the boardinghouse could not help being filthy. Their work dirtied all their things, and no amount of scrubbing would get the fish smell off their shirts and pants. Her father had taught her not to judge people on such shallow points: What a man wore or owned had nothing to do with his heart and character. She inhaled deeply, his scent mingled with the cleansing air of the forest. - P44
Hansu slid his hands beneath her short traditional blouse, and she did not stop him. He untied the long sash that held her blouse together and opened it. Sunja started to cry quietly, and he pulled her toward him and held her, making low, soothing sounds, and she allowed him to comfort her as he did what he wanted. He lowered her on the ground tenderly. - P44
He had his hands firmly under her buttocks the entire time, and though he had tried to shield her from the twigs and leaves, bits of the forest had made red welts on the backs of her legs. When they separated, he used his handkerchief to clean the blood. - P44
"Your body is pretty. Full of juice like a ripened fruit." - P44
Sunja couldn’t say anything. She had suckled him like an infant. While he was moving inside her, doing this thing that she had witnessed pigs and horses doing, she was stunned by how sharp and bright the pain was and was grateful that the ache subsided. When they rose from the carpet of yellow and red leaves, he helped to straighten her undergarments, and he dressed her. - P44
"You are my dear girl." This was what he told her when they did this again. - P44
"It’s just like yours," she said, opening her eyes. Hansu had a heavy gold pocket watch from England. Similarly sized, hers was made of silver with a gold wash, he said. A while back, he’d taught her the difference between the long hand and the short and how to tell time. His watch hung from a solid gold chain with a T-bar that went through his vest buttonhole. - P46
He pushed down her inner slip to expose her breasts and put his mouth over her. He opened her long skirt. Her shock at the urgency of his needs had diminished somewhat since the first time they made love. They had been together many times, and by now, the pain was not as great as it had been for her initially. What Sunja liked about lovemaking was the gentle touching as well as the powerful desires of his body. She liked how his face changed from grave to innocent in those moments. When it ended, she closed her blouse. In a few moments, he would have to return to work and she would wash the boardinghouse linens. - P47
Hansu did not believe that man was designed to have sex with only one woman; marriage was unnatural to him, but he would never abandon a woman who had borne him children. He thought a man may need a number of women, but he found that he preferred this one girl. He loved the sturdiness of Sunja’s body, the fullness of her bosom and hips. Her soft face comforted him, and he had come to depend on her innocence and adoration. After being with her, Hansu felt like there was little he couldn’t do. It was true after all: Being with a young girl made a man feel like a boy again. - P48
Sunja looked away from him. He was saying something, but she couldn’t hear what it was. It was as if her mind would no longer interpret his words with meaning. His talk was just sounds, beats of noise. Nothing made sense. He had a wife and three daughters in Japan? Since she had met him, he had been straightforward, she supposed. Every promise he’d ever made had been kept. He said there would be a surprise, and he had brought a watch for her, but the surprise she had for him, she no longer wanted him to know. Nothing about him had ever made her suspect that he was a jebi—a kind of man who could flit from one woman to another. Did he make love to his wife, too? What did she know about men, anyway? - P48
She could see her father so clearly: his beautiful eyes, broken lip, his hunched and delayed gait. When he finished his long day’s work, he would carve her dolls out of dried corncobs and branches. If there was a brass coin left in his pocket, he’d buy her a piece of taffy. It was better that he was dead so he would not see what a filthy creature she had become. He had taught her to respect herself, and she had not. She had betrayed her mother and father, who had done nothing but work hard and take care of her like a jewel. - P49
Hansu stopped and looked at her, needing to reevaluate the girl standing in front of him. The fire in her body had never been expressed in words, and now he knew she could be different. - P50
"Were you trying to get me to marry you? Because you couldn’t marry a normal fellow?" Even Hansu realized the cruelty of his own words. Sunja grabbed her bundle and ran home. - P50
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