Favorite Quotes from Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

People are rotten everywhere you go. They’re no good. You want to see a very bad man? Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination. Let’s see how good he is when he can do whatever he wants. [page 42]

Save your family. Feed your belly. Pay attention, and be skeptical of the people in charge. If the Korean nationalists couldn’t get their country back, let your kids learn Japanese and try to get ahead. Adapt. Wasn’t it as simple as that? For every patriot fighting for a free Korea, or for any unlucky Korean bastard fighting on behalf of Japan, there were then thousand compatriots on the ground and elsewhere who were just trying to eat. In the end, your belly is your emperor. [page 174]

Living everyday in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage. [page 193]

She was twenty nine year old widow with two young children to feed and educate. Sunja was not old, but she could not imagine that any man would want her now. If she had never been beautiful before, she was not even appealing now. She was a plain woman with a country face, her skin spotted and wrinkled by the sun. her body was strong and stout, larger than when she had been a girl. In her life, she’s been desired by two men; it was difficult to imagine having that again. Sometimes, she felt like a serviceable farm animal who’d one day be useless. [page 213]

 ..life was like a game where the player could adjust the dials yet also expect the uncertainty of factors he couldn’t control. [page 293]

Akiko was training to be a sociologist. She collected pieces of dat, and her lover was her favorite puzzle. [page 299]

Koreans born in Japan after 1952 had to report to their local ward office on their fourteenth birthday to request permission to stay in Japan. Every three years, Solomon would have to do this again unless he left Japan for good. [Kindle, loc 7109]

 In life, there was so much insult and injury, and she had no choice but to collect what was hers. [Kindle, loc 7223]

Quite liberal and tolerant of me not to be upset that your ex is calling you drunk when she’s a professional sex worker. Either I’m confident in my value, or I’m confident in our relationship, or I’m just ignorant of the fact that you’re going to hurt my feelings..” [Kindle, loc 7881]

It was not Hansu that she missed, or even Isak. What she was seeing again in her dreams was her youth, her beginning, and her wishes—so this was how she became a woman. [Kindle, loc 8692]

 Beyond the dailiness, there had been moments of shimmering beauty and some glory, too, even in this ajumma’s life. Even if no one knew, it was true. [Kindle, loc 8696]

If history so often fails to represent all of us, it is not because historians are not interested, but because historians often lack the primary documents of so-called minor characters in history.