Young-Ha Kim Quotes

A kid who has just started to lie is taking the first step as a storyteller.

Why does nothing change, even when you set out for a faraway place?

Novels are food for the leftover hours of life, the in-between times, the moments of waiting.

When the moon covers the sun, we have a solar eclipse. What do you call it when birds do that?

A novel, basically, is writing one sentence — then, without violating the scope of the first one, writing the next sentence.

Dont be a fish; be a frog. Swim in the water and jump when you hit ground.

We are all born artists. ... Almost everything kids do is art.

And still everything’s the same, even though I did my best to get as far away as I could.

I always take a close look at those who lose themselves in self portraits. They are solitary souls, prone to introspection, who have really grappled with their existence.

A revolution cannot progress without the fuel of terror. With time that relationship inverts: the revolution presses forward for the sake of terror. Like an artist, the man creating terror should be detached, cold-blooded. He must keep in mind that the energy of the terror he releases can consume him.

Sometimes fiction is more easily understood than true events. Reality is often pathetic.

There are only two ways to be a god: through creation or murder.

[We often] criticize the people on TV: 'He just can't act.' 'You call that singing?' ... We get jealous not because we're evil, but because we have little artists pent up inside us.

Life is a continuous cycle of once-terrifying things becoming normal.

People who don’t know how to summarize have no dignity. Neither do people who needlessly drag on their messy lives. They who don’t know the beauty of simplification, of pruning away the unnecessary, die without ever comprehending the true meaning of life.

The artistic desire reveals itself in dark form - in karaoke bars [or] trolling on the Internet.

The magic question is, 'What for?' But art is not for anything. Art is the ultimate goal.

People unconsciously want to reveal their inner urges.