Human Acts Quotes

“I never let myself forget that every single person i meet is a member of this human race. And that includes you, professor, listening to this testimony. As it includes myself... I'm fighting, alone, every day. I fight with the hell that I survived. I fight with the fact of my own humanity. I fight with the idea that death is the only way of escaping this fact.
So tell me, professor, what answers do you have for me? You, a human being just like me.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“All the same, there was something infinitely noble about how his body still bore the traces of hands that had touched it, a tangible record of having been cared for, been valued, that made me envious and sad. Mine, on the other hand, crushed out of shape beneath a tower of others, was shameful, detestable. From that moment on, I was filled with hatred for my body. Our bodies, tossed there like lumps of meat. Our filthy, rotting faces, reeking in the sun.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“it was as that strange, vivid night was drawing to a close, as the faint blue light of dawn had begun to seep into the sky's black ink, that i suddenly thought of you, dong-ho. yes, you'd been there with me, that day. until something like a cold cudgel had suddenly slammed into my side. until i collapsed like a rag doll. until my arms flung themselves up in mute alarm, amid the cacophony of footsteps drumming against the tarmac, ear-splitting gunfire. until i felt the warm spread of my own blood moving up over my shoulder, the back of my neck. until then, you were with me.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“Gripped by this familiar shame, she thought of the dead, for whom the absence of life meant they would never be hungry again. But life still lingered on for her, with hunger still a yoke around her neck. It was that which had tormented her for the past five years – that she could still feel hunger, still salivate at the sight of food.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“I can't get my head around why I didn't just call your name that day. Why I just came tottering on behind, struggling for breath and dumb as a mute.
If I call your name next time, will you please just turn around? You don't need to say 'yes, mum?' or anything like that. Just turn round so I can see you.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“After you died I could not hold a funeral
And so my life became a funeral.

Oh, return to me.
Oh, return to me when I call your name.
Do not delay any longer. Return to me now.

After you died I couldn't hold a funeral,
So these eyes that once beheld you became a shrine.
These ears that once heard your voice became a shrine.
These lungs that once inhaled your breath became a shrine.

The flowers that bloom in spring, the willows, the raindrops and snowflakes became shrines.


The morning ushering in each day, the evenings that daily darken, became shrines.

After you died I couldn't hold a funeral, so my life became a funeral.
After you were wrapped in a tarpaulin and carted away in a garbage truck,
After sparkling jets of water sprayed unforgivably from the fountain.
Everywhere the lights of the temple shrines are burning.
In the flowers that bloom in spring, in the snowflakes. In the evenings that draw each day to a close. Sparks from the candles, burning in empty drinks bottles.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“I would have run away. Had it been this woman and not Jeong-dae who toppled over in front of you, still you would have run away. Even if it had been one of your brothers, your father, your mother, still you would have run away. You look round at the old man. You don’t ask him if this is his granddaughter. You wait, patiently, for him to speak when he’s ready. There will be no forgiveness. You look into his eyes, which are flinching from the sight laid out in front of them as though it is the most appalling thing in all this world. There will be no forgiveness. Least of all for me.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“I think of the festering wound in my side.
Of the bullet that tore in there.
The strange chill, the seemingly blunt force, of that initial impact,
That instantly became a lump of fire churning my insides,
Of the hole it made in my other side, where it flew out and
tugged my hot blood behind it.
Of the barrel it was blasted out of.
Of the smooth trigger.
Of the eye that had me in it's sights.
Of the eyes of the one who gave the order to fire.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“Work is a guarantee of solitude. Living a solitary life; you are able to let the regular rhythm of long hours of work followed by brief rest carry you through the days, with no time to fear the outer dark beyond the circle of light”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“بعد أن فقدناك استحالت كل أيامنا مساءً. بات المساء شارعنا وبيتنا. في ذلك الضوء الشاحب الذي لم يعد يُضيء الحياة أو يُظلِمها، نأكل ونمشي وننام.”
― Han Kang , Human Acts

“بقى السؤال الذي يفرض نفسه علينا هو : ماهي الإنسانية ؟
ما الذي نفعل لنحافظ على الإنسانية بحيث تحمل مدلولاً معينًا وليس آخر ؟”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“Dong-ho, I need you to take my hand and guide me away from all this. Away to where the light shines through, to where the flowers bloom.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“Looking at that boy's life, what is this thing we call a soul? Just some non-existent idea? Or something that might as well not exist?

Or no, is it like a kind of glass?
Glass is transparent right? And fragile. That's the fundamental nature of glass. And that's why objects made of glass have to be handled with care. After all, if they end up smashed or cracked or chipped then they're good for nothing, right, you just have to chuck them away.

Before, we used to have a kind of glass that couldn't be broken. A truth so hard and clear it might as well have been made of glass. So when you think about it, it was only when we shattered that we proved we had souls . That what we really were was humans made of glass.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“If I could hide in dreams.
Or perhaps in memories.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves this single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, damaged, slaughtered – is this the essential fate of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable?”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“You’re not like me, Seong-hee. You believe in a divine being, and in this thing we call humanity. You never did manage to win me over. I could never believe in the existence of a being who watches over us with consummate love. I couldn’t even make it through the Lord’s Prayer without the words drying up in my throat. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. I forgive no one, and no one forgives me.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“I no longer felt fifteen. Thirty-five, forty-five ; these numbers came, in turn, to feel somehow insufficient. Not even sixty-five, no, nor seventy-five, seemed to encompass what I was.
I wasn't JeongDae any more, the runt of the year. I wasn't Park JeongDae, whose ideas of love and fear were both bound up in the figure of his sister. A strange violence welled up within me, not spurred by the fact of my death, but simply because of the thoughts that wouldn't stop tearing through me, the things I needed to know. Who killed me, who killed my sister, and why. The more of myself I devoted to these questions, the firmer this new strength within me became.
The ceaseless flow of blood, blood that flowed from a place without eyes or cheeks, darkened, thickened, into a vicious treacle ooze.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“there will be no forgiveness. Least of all for me.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“The flowers that bloom in spring, the willows, the raindrops and snowflakes became shrines. The mornings ushering in each day, the evenings that daily darken, became shrines.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“Conscience, the most terrifying thing in the world.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“The decisive factor dominating the morality of the crowd has not yet been clearly identified. One point of interest is the emergence in situ of a particular ethical fluctuation separate from the moral standard of the individuals who constitute the crowd. Certain crowds do not blench at the prospect of looting, murder, and rape, while on the other hand, others display a level of courage and altruism which those making up that same crowd would have had difficulty in achieving as individuals. The author argues that, rather than this latter type of crowd being made up of especially noble individuals, that nobility which is a fundamental human attribute is able to manifest itself through borrowing strength from the crowd; also, similarly, that the former case is one in which humanity’s essential barbarism is exacerbated not by the especially barbaric nature of any of the individuals involved, but through that magnification which occurs naturally in crowds.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“That the moon is the eye of the night.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“I was startled to find an absence inside myself: the absence of fear. I remember feeling that it was all right to die; I felt the blood of a hundred thousand hearts surging together into one enormous artery, fresh and clean... the sublime enormity of a single heart, pulsing blood through that vessel and into my own. I dared to feel a part of it.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“Break open that moment and out of it will come massacre, torture, violent repression. It gets shoved aside, beaten to a pulp, swept aside in the tide of brutality. But now, if we can only keep our eyes open, if we can all hold our gazes steady, until the bitter end...”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“Is it possible to bear witness to the fact that I ended up despising my own body, the very physical stuff of my self? That I will fully destroy the warmth, any affection whose intensity was more than I could bear, and ran away? To somewhere colder, somewhere safer. Purely to stay alive.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“I’m fighting, alone, every day. I fight with the hell that I survived. I fight with the fact of my own humanity. I fight with the idea that death is the only way of escaping this fact.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“She recalls sentences roughly darned and patched, places where the forms of words can just about be made out in paragraphs that had been otherwise expunged. You. I. That. Perhaps. Precisely. Everything. You. Why. Gaze. Your eyes. Near and far. That. Vividly. Now. A little more. Vaguely. Why did you. Remember? Gasping for breath in these interstices, tiny islands among language charred out of existence. How can there be water coming out of the fountain? What can we possibly be celebrating?”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“Leben wir nur in der Illusion, Würde zu besitzen, obwohl wir uns von einem Moment auf den nächsten in Abschaum verwandeln können, in ein lästiges Insekt, in eine wilde Kreatur, in eine formlose Masse aus Geschwüren und Eiter? Ist es die Bestimmung des Menschen, erniedrigt, verletzt, getötet zu werden, wie es die Geschichte immer wieder belegt?”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“You haven't woken yourself up, though, merely passed through into another layer. You feel the weight of an enormous glacier bearing down on your body. You wish that you were able to flow beneath it, to become fluid, whether seawater, oil, or lava, and shuck off these rigid, impermeable outlines, which encase you like a coffin. Only that way might you find some form of release.”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“Onların yüzlerini görmek istiyorum, onlar uyurken göz kapaklarının üzerinde dolaşmak istiyorum, aniden rüyalarına girmek istiyorum, bütün gece alınlarından göz kapaklarına, göz kapaklarından alınlarına gidip gelmek istiyorum. Ta ki kâbuslarında kanayan gözlerimi görünceye kadar. Benim sesimi duyana kadar. Neden bana ateş ettiniz, beni neden öldürdünüz?”
― Han Kang, Human Acts