willow

collecting quotes

[willow @TunaWillow]

@dostoevskytitty it was so bad too

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In Texas they told me to stop at Buc-ee's for gas.

I have been to shrines. I have stood in temples that took two hundred years to build.

I was not prepared for the gas station.

There were one hundred and twenty fuel pumps.

I counted them because I did not believe them.

A man beside me was filling a truck the size of my first apartment, and he was not filling it because it was empty.

He was filling it because he was here, and here is where a man fills things.

Inside was a hall so vast I lost the horizon.

A wall of jerky. A wall of fudge I did not know the country produced.

A brisket sandwich handed to me by a man in a beaver costume.

And I want to be clear, the beaver is not a mascot.

The beaver is a saint.

The people speak of him the way my grandmother spoke of the mountain behind her house.

And the bathrooms.

I had been warned about the bathrooms and I had dismissed the warning as the pride of a loud people.

I was wrong to dismiss it.

The bathrooms are famous across the whole state and they have earned it.

I have slept in worse hotels. I nearly bowed upon entering.

A janitor was polishing the floor with the devotion of a man tending a garden he loved, and when I thanked him he said "welcome in," which I have since learned is what Texas says instead of hello, and also instead of I am glad you exist.

I went in for gas. I was inside for ninety minutes.

I came out with fudge, a shirt printed with a joke I do not fully understand, forty dollars of jerky, and a feeling I can only describe as having been to church.

I did not need any of it.

I needed all of it.

I have walked through the great cathedrals of the old world. I lit no candle there.

I lit no candle at Buc-ee's either.

But I did fill the truck.

And I understand now that in Texas, this is the same thing.

[willow @TunaWillow]

That was the whole point of money, wasn’t it, to be able to get your kid whatever he needed?

[willow @TunaWillow]

Pachinko
Min Jin Lee

[willow @TunaWillow]

There’s nothing fucking worse than knowing that you’re just like everybody else. What a messed-up, lousy existence.

[willow @TunaWillow]

if you do badly, life makes you pay a shit tax, too...“Pay attention: The ones who pay the sit tax are mostly people who were born in the wrong place and the wrong time and are hanging on to the planet by their broken fingernails

[willow @TunaWillow]

Etsuko had failed in this important way—she had not taught her children to hope, to believe in the perhaps-absurd possibility that they might win. Pachinko was a foolish game, but life was not.

[willow @TunaWillow]

I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community…It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members..or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion

[willow @TunaWillow]

“because she would not believe that she was no different than her parents, that seeing him as only Korean—good or bad—was the same as seeing him only as a bad Korean. She could not see his humanity, and Noa realized that this was what he wanted most of all: to be seen as human.”

[willow @TunaWillow]

Never one to talk much, as she’d gotten older her mother had a lot more to say, but Sunja never seemed to know what to say to her.

[willow @TunaWillow]

“you’ve had enough food and money, so you’ve started to think about ideas—that’s normal. Patriotism is just an idea, so is capitalism or communism. But ideas can make men forget their own interests. And the guys in charge will exploit men who believe in ideas too much.

[willow @TunaWillow]

“Sometimes, I’d like to see my home again,” Kim said quietly.
“For people like us, home doesn’t exist.” Hansu took out a cigarette, and Kim rushed to light it.

[willow @TunaWillow]

also, he had never hated anyone. Though he shouldn’t, Yoseb hated this man—his expensive clothes, flashy shoes, his unchecked confidence, reeking of a devilish invulnerability. He hated him for not being in pain. He had no right to claim his brother’s child.

[willow @TunaWillow]

You are very brave, Noa. Much, much braver than me. Living everyday in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage.

[willow @TunaWillow]

Which was worse—his wife working for moneylenders or him owing money to them? For a Korean man, the choices were always shit

[willow @TunaWillow]

@dostoevskytitty xD do you just not care?

[willow @TunaWillow]

Your home is with your husband,” Yangjin said. This was what her father had told her when she married Hoonie. “Never come home again,” he’d said to her, but Yangjin couldn’t say this to her own child. “Make a good home for him and your child. That’s your job. They must not suffer

[willow @TunaWillow]

“You must ask the Lord for forgiveness, child, and ask Him for faith and courage as you make your new home in Japan. Be perfect, child. Every Korean must be on his best behavior over there. They think so little of us already. You cannot give them any room to think worse of us”

[willow @TunaWillow]

Sunja couldn’t comprehend his reasons. …neither thought what they’d done for him was so unusual. They would have done it for any lodger, and he had even paid his fees on time. “No normal man would want to raise another man’s child unless he was an angel or a fool,”

[willow @TunaWillow]

“I don’t want that,” he said, …“I’d like to ask her, to ask her about her heart. I’d like to know if she could love me one day.” Isak felt embarrassed, because it had occurred to him that, like an ordinary man, he wanted a wife who’d love him, not just feel indebted to him.”

[willow @TunaWillow]

“For a woman, the man you marry will determine the quality of your life completely. A good man is a decent life, and a bad man is a cursed life—but no matter what, always expect suffering, and just keep working hard. No one will take care of a poor woman—just ourselves.”

[willow @TunaWillow]

Sunja-ya, a woman’s life is endless work and suffering. There is suffering and then more suffering. It’s better to expect it, you know