The Orphan Master's Son Quotes
"In the year 1592, did sharks not offer fish from their own mouths to help sustain Admiral Yi’s sailors during the siege of Okpo Harbor?"
"Does our own Commander Ga, winner of the Golden Belt, not have a soothing bowl of shark-fin soup before each triumphant taekwondo match?"
"When all hope was gone, the Orphan Master burned the bunks, the boys sleeping around a pot stove that glowed on their last night."
"What was happening to them didn’t need a name—it was everything, every fingernail you chewed and swallowed, every lift of an eyelid, every trip to the latrine where you tried to shit out wads of balled sawdust."
"When the waves got rough, and he felt panicky, Jun Do turned to Gil."
"On the horizon was a carrier group from the American fleet, ships so large they didn’t look as if they could move, let alone float."
"What’s the point? It’s shit for us either way."
"A request like that could only come from the top, perhaps the very top."
"Imagine if the Second Mate didn’t have you to ask stupid questions to all day."
"I didn’t realize how much I needed someone to keep telling me why."
"There’s nothing to do," Jun Do said. "We were ordered to get shrimp, so we must get shrimp, right?"
"The thing is, the Russians aren’t the ones who took her from me."
"The trawlers were always coming. You’d be down on the gutting floor, and you’d hear the engines of a trawler coming astern."
"When they got agitated, their flesh turned red and white, red and white, and when they struck, to stun their victims, they lanterned up, flashing bright as you could imagine."
"Real stories like this, human ones, could get you sent to prison, and it didn’t matter what they were about."
"We’ll just go out for shrimp," the Pilot said, "and if we don’t get any, we don’t get any."
"I suppose no lifeboat’s worth sinking for," the Captain lamented.
"I’m just a guy they sent to language school."
"People don’t mean anything to them, anything at all."
"If you ask me, heroes are unstable and unpredictable. They get the job done, but damned if they’re not difficult to work with."
"You could have said you were a reporter, doing a story on humble fishermen."
"But you, you froze, and now it may be over for us."
"That’s life on the top floor... I don’t even notice the dogs anymore."
"Aren’t they going to start missing you at the cannery?"
"The hard part’s over, and you took it well, no one else could’ve done what you did."
"To survive in this world, you got to be many times a coward but at least once a hero."
"It’s as real as the sharks rising out of the dark water, as the teeth in my arm."
"You’re a survivor who has nothing to live for."
"For us, the story is more important than the person."
"To have the sound of fire make no echo."
"I’ve been steered by others, I’ve been the one trying to escape from their paths. But Commander Ga, he is a man who steps on the gas."
"I would’ve driven off the bridge and killed us both to make that moment last forever, such was my love for Sun Moon."
"If people eat fast, you eat fast. If they drop their eyes when someone comes around, so do you."
"You suddenly understand you’ll never see him again. I’ve heard the last gibberish a person says."
"When a person slips into the water, right in front of you, the disbelief of it, that never leaves you."
"I’ve held the widow, his widow, with these arms as she sang nursery rhymes to him, wherever he was."
"I was a model citizen, I was a hero of the state."
"It’s true that when the mines open their maw for more workers, everyone must go, we have no say over that."
"You’re not an asshole husband. I know the look of one."
"To get a new life, you’ve got to trade in your old one."
"The Actress cannot play a role, she must, in an act of martyrdom, sacrifice herself to become the character."
"What could the Minister have done that was so bad you killed him and then went after his wife and kids?"
"Good night, Commander Ga," I said, and watched as his hands typed four words, and then paused, waiting for more.
"The pain of the Captain pressing me with inky needles, of the saltwater he splashed on the raw tattoo, of the Second Mate's wife weeping the infection out with a steaming towel."
"For the love of Juche," the old Pubyok said. "If we were interrogating this idiot, there’d already be a funeral team on its way to retrieve that glorious, glorious actress and her poor tots."
"That’s the great thing about their relationship: a new beginning, a chance to unburden all."
"The first success we have to report is that our Grass into Meat Campaign is a complete triumph."
"How can one tear, tracing its brief journey, start as a drop of ruin, trail into a drip of resolution, and, finally, splash with national fervor?"
"You’re lucky I was strong enough to protect you, you should be thanking your stars I was here to stop it."
"Commander Ga didn’t have anything to do with the missing actress—he went into Prison 33 and didn’t come out. He died down there in the mine."
"Ga turned them into little birds and taught them a sad song. Then they flew away toward sunset, to a place where you’ll never find them."
"Help you? My family is gone, my friends are gone, I’m gone. I won’t ever help you."
"I hate you," Comrade Buc said. "You have no power over me now, nothing. Do you hear me? I’m free now."
"Eleven years I procured for those prisons. The uniforms come in children’s sizes, you know."
"In the quiet, you could hear Buc preaching about children being stoned and hanged, going on and on."
"The Dear Leader only has room in his heart for opera now," she said, and offered him the last draw of her cigarette.
"I used to smoke," he said. "But in prison, I lost the habit."
"You should probably tell me why you were in prison," she said.
"Instead of the woman being trapped, now it is the burned man who has a choice."
"The wife’s almost positive that beneath the burns this husband is not hers."
"But what happens to the woman? In either outcome, she is alone."
"To mark the occasion, the Minister of Collective Child Rearing announced the composition of two new children’s songs—‘Hide Deeply’ and ‘Duck the Rope.’"
"The Inuit people are a tribe of isolated savages that live near the North Pole."
"The meal, of course, was bulgogi, and Sun Moon had prepared all manner of banchan to accompany the feast."
"Sometimes people hurt other people. It’s an unfortunate fact."
"A day is nothing. A day is just a match you strike after the ten thousand matches before it have gone out."
"Names come and go. Names change. I don’t even have one."
"To keep someone alive, you put them inside you, you put their face on your heart."
"If for some reason duty calls your husband on a mission, would you do me the honor, would you join me in my box?"
"If you’re talking about the boys from Propaganda, everything they say is a lie."
"It’s you that matter, not your names. It’s the two of you I’ll never forget."
"All we need to do is go around loosening the soil."
"I suppose I have a real one, but I don’t know what it is."
"I was against having a woman in the Division, but you were right—she’s the future."
"A woman really was hired at Division 42 not long ago."
"Sometimes I forget that. Do you remember when I first laid eyes on you?"
"Remember that you have no secrets from me. That’s what I’m here for."
"In a world of danger and intrigue, one woman will discover that a pure heart is the only weapon that can repel the imperialist menace."
"In this world, no one can make such a promise."
"Look, citizens, at how delicate are her sensibilities."
"It’s beautiful, but sacrifices must be made."
"You’re the one with the notions," she went on.
"Out on the runway, Ga found the Dear Leader and Commander Park orchestrating teams of children rolling barrels onto forklift pallets."
"You know her, she must look perfect. She’ll fuss until perfection is found."
"What does the American say? They’re curious about the variety of aid to be found in our shipment."
"I’ve never actually used this thing on a box before."
"How can someone be so cruel to leave her own clothes behind?"
"I don’t understand who you are. You could have gotten away for good. But you came here."
"I’ve taken the ultimate from you. I’ve pulled the thread that will unravel you."
"I’ve given you a piece of me, and now you know who I really am."
"What kind of person would do that? Who would make their way to me, who would throw away his own life, just to spoil mine?"
"My boys in Division 42 will get this straightened out."
"We must assume that Commander Ga had a hand in this."
"The amount of pain that will come of this, it’ll be too much for a single man to bear."