Quotes from An Na

Hats are like a halo of happiness.

Your life can be different, Young Ju. Study and be strong. In America, women have choices.

Love is unexplainable

There are many versions of a story. Many sides and lenses that can distort, change, illuminate what is seen and unseen. What is heard and unheard. What is felt and unfelt. In the end, truth is but a facet of a diamond, a spark of ray from the sun, a forget-me-not flower seen from the eyes of a bee. What lives and breathes as reality is a perception, so who is to say what is possible and impossible?

The middle place. Not death. Not life. A limbo state of existence filled with the hours of turning the wheels. Eating to not feel hungry. Sleeping to not feel tired. Waking to not feel asleep. The middle place that exists between breaths, in that pause, that slight breathlessness before an exhale and an inhale. Between the crest and the valley. Where the path always meanders cliffside.

Why not?" I ask, "Are we supposed to be invincible? Isn't there a price to be paid? We pillage our environment and we suffer natural disasters. The rich use the poor and we have riots. It's our history, Will. Our human history. We have [messed]-up diseases that pass on from generation to generation, repeating one too many genes or being completely absent on some random chromosome. It's not why, but when.

Strange, how the body knows instinctually to protect itself. Eyes blinking before the blast of sand. Arm rising before the blow. The will to survive is not a conscious choice, but encoded in every cell. The body acts to defend and protect itself even against one's own mind.

The middle place. Not death. Not life. A limbo state of existence filled with the hours of turning the wheels. Eating to not feel hungry. Sleeping to not feel tired. Waking to not feel asleep. The middle place that exists between breaths, in that pause, the slight breathlessness before an exhale and an inhale. Between the crest and the valley. Where the path always meanders cliffside.

I see the cliff's edge drawing nearer. I must jump or I will fall.

You know how to end your life. Hers could be another story. We cannot help you with this decision. Yet when all is sifted, what remains? Faith.

I climb to the very top step and look behind me at the wall of memories. Who are we in the end? A collection of photos? How do we know what is truly lived if we cannot remember it?

Did you die last night only to be reborn with dawns light? Into this skin you wear. Eyes that can't see. Ears that can't hear. A mind that holds no truth. You died but forgot to leave. The past crawls into the present, birthing the future. Shell-shocked. Shell locked. And all the answers. On the inside. Your mind mirrors. A kaleidoscope. You inside you inside you.

The pears are pale with faint brown spotting. I reach out and press. The point at which ripeness crosses over into decay is unperceivable. Only the fact remains. The slightly overly sweet, acrid stench. The soft yielding flesh. The discoloration.

A dollar for afternoon dreams is expensive and cheap.

If I had to speak in front of a Korean audience, I would be hard pressed to sound other than a little girl.

No one deserves anything from you. No one deserves your trust or your love—they have to earn it.

Careful, love. Prices aren't the only things I can cut in half!

Try becoming a person people want to be with rather than conforming yourself to the false identity of what you conceive their ideal to be.

I remember learning new words, trying to figure out what common things like cider, finding myself upset that my parents couldn't help me understand this new culture, that it was up to me to interpret for them as well as myself.

I had been struggling with how to create a child-like protagonist's voice without making it sound as though I was 'dumbing down' to the character. They are able to see events, people and places with an intensity and open mindedness that adults lack.