To be honest, Im not that much of a reader of Korean fiction, since so little is translated.

For sometimes you can't help but crave some ruin in what you love.

It is 'where we are' that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not.

The truth, finally, is who can tell it.

As for what's the most challenging aspect of teaching, it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.

So my first book I had no experience having written a book, but each book is a little snapshot of who you are at that moment, accrued all through time, so I accept that.

In this difficult era the most valuable commodity is the unfailing turn of the hours and how they retrieve for us the known harbor of yesterday.

They're not parallel at all. They're my concerns, but how they're expressed particularly on the page is completely divorced from who I am in my street life.

Don’t sanctuaries become prisons, and vice versa, foremost in the mind?

Imagination might not be limitless. It's still tethered to the universe of what we know.

For at some point, each of us will be asked to embody what we feel and know.

The smells of Christmas are the smells of childhood

If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.

Wars always bring about a conservative reaction. They overwhelm and destroy patient and careful efforts to improve the condition of man.

The solution is to ignore the bad habit and put your energy toward building a new habit that will override the old one.

A man that seeks truth and loves it must be reckoned precious to any human society.

And I particularly like the whole thing of being boss. Boss and employee... It's the slave quality that I find very alluring.

Failure is sucess if we learn from it.

I'm like a shooting star! I've come so far! I can't go back to where I used to be!

For [the] quick in wit and light in manners be either seldom troubled or very soon weary, in carrying a very heavy purse.

Instead of creating a reason why you cannot love the world, try to create a reason why you should and must love the world.