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The Vegetarian QUOTES

The Vegetarian QUOTES

1 " 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 , The Vegetarian

2 " 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 , The Vegetarian

3 " 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 never done nothing but endure. She had believed in her own inherent goodness, her humanity, and lived accordingly, never causing anyone harm. "

― Han Kang , The Vegetarian

4 " 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 , The Vegetarian

5 " 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 , The Vegetarian

6 " The kind of woman whose goodness is oppressive "

― Han Kang , The Vegetarian

7 " 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 , The Vegetarian

8 " 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 , The Vegetarian

9 " The more she laughs, the more he ups the ante with his clowning. By the time he finishes he will have run through all the secret mysteries of laughter that human beings have ever understood, mobilizing everything at his disposal. There is no way for him to know how guilty it makes his mother feel, seeing such a young child go to such lengths just to wring a bit of apparent happiness from her, or that her laughter will all eventually run out. "

― Han Kang , The Vegetarian

10 " She's a good woman, he thought. The kind of woman whose goodness is oppressive. "

― Han Kang , The Vegetarian

11 " Se solo i nostri occhi non fossero visibili agli altri, pensa. Se solo si potessero nascondere i propri occhi al mondo. "

― Han Kang , The Vegetarian

12 " Io non ti conosco" mormorò, stringendo più forte la cornetta, che aveva poggiato sulla forcella ma teneva ancora in mano. "Quindi non c'è nessun bisogno di un perdono reciproco. Perché non ti conosco". "

― Han Kang , The Vegetarian

13 " 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 , The Vegetarian

14 " Why, is it such a bad thing to die? "

― Han Kang , The Vegetarian

15 " Time was a wave, almost cruel in its relentlessness. "

― Han Kang , The Vegetarian

16 " I want to swallow you, have you melt into me and flow through my veins. "

― Han Kang , The Vegetarian

17 " 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 , The Vegetarian

18 " 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 , The Vegetarian

19 " 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 , The Vegetarian

20 " 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 , The Vegetarian