I didn’t believe in any bright future for me. I didn’t know if I would even be able to make a living. Therefore, "a moment ago" was always the best moment, and the present was always better than the future. - P154
As much as I loved the place, life doesn’t give such opportunities so readily, and I couldn’t continue this state of hovering between reality and unreality forever. - P154
It wasn’t so much a fetish as it was an obsession. He had a fixed script for the whole thing from beginning to end. Only when he and the other person (me, in other words) followed this script precisely could he calm down. - P155
It took quite some time for me to understand the context. His apartment, to speak in Korean terms, was a "one-room." Small and narrow, but the ceiling very high, with a skylight through which you could see the stars. Gazing at my body and his own tied-up self reflected on the glass panes above us against the black night, he would murmur, "Beautiful." - P156
His Grandfather was taken up with other concerns. According to his grandson, the older man’s purpose in life could be summed up in one word: "survival." - P156
"I wonder why they can’t leave those terrible times behind. Whether in life or death." "Trauma. Probably." - P157
… If I could make a wish I want to be just a little happier
If I become too happy I will miss sadness - P157
Life I love life … I don’t know what I want but I still expect a lot - P158
Slowly, he whispered, "I feel like I’m being given permission to stay alive." His reply was somehow so heart-breaking that I tied him up with all my might. - P159
Once you experience a terrible trauma and understand the world from an extreme perspective, it is difficult to overcome this perspective. Because your very survival depends on it. - P161
My parents and their parents’ generations, after surviving the Korean War, had always, just like the generation that survived World War II, set their purpose not to live a human life but to have an animal’s instinct for survival. - P161
Life shrinks into a trap made up of a shimmering moment in the past, a trap where they endlessly repeat that singular moment when they were surest of being alive. That moment is short, but long after it has passed, good times as well as bad slip like sand through their fingers as they meaninglessly repeat and confirm their survival. - P162
There was nothing left for me to wait for. But there I remained, standing in his bathroom, waiting for someone to miraculously find me, to release me from my ties to this life. - P163
No one asked us, when we were still nameless
Whether we wanted to live or not Now I wander the big city alone Looking in doors and windows Waiting and waiting for something … - P163
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