Pachinko

Author:: Min Jin Lee Full Title:: Pachinko Tags:#media/book

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• Summary::
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* Highlights first synced by Readwise 2021-01-06

* Few fathers in the world treasured their daughters as much as Hoonie, who seemed to live to make his child smile. In the winter when Sunja was thirteen years old, Hoonie died quietly from tuberculosis. At his burial, Yangjin and her daughter were inconsolable. The next morning, the young widow rose from her pallet and returned to work. ([Location 165](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=165))
* No doubt, the canny and the hardy survived that winter, but the shameful reports—of children going to bed and not waking up, girls selling their innocence for a bowl of wheat noodles, and the elderly stealing away quietly to die so the young could eat—were far too plentiful. ([Location 174](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=174))
* “No matter,” he would say, “no matter.” Whether China capitulated or avenged itself, the weeds would have to be pulled from the vegetable garden, rope sandals would need to be woven if they were to have shoes, and the thieves who tried often to steal their few chickens had to be kept away. ([Location 216](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=216))
* “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.” ([Location 650](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=650))
* His faith had not wavered, but his temperament had altered seemingly forever. It was as if a warm room had gotten cooler, but it was still the same room. Shin admired this idealist seated before him, his young eyes shining with faith, but as his elder, he wanted Isak to take care. ([Location 1022](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=1022))
* Ikaino was a misbegotten village of sorts, comprised of mismatched, shabby houses. The shacks were uniform in their poorly built manner and flimsy materials. Here and there, a stoop had been washed or a pair of windows polished, but the majority of the facades were in disrepair. ([Location 1521](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=1521))
    * **Note**: Here amd there reinorcing the shoddy
* In the end, your belly was your emperor. ([Location 2617](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=2617))
* Living every day in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage.” ([Location 2907](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=2907))
* man she’d loved as a girl was an idea she’d had of him—feelings without any verification. ([Location 3340](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=3340))
* All these people—both the Japanese and the Koreans—are fucked because they keep thinking about the group. But here’s the truth: There’s no such thing as a benevolent leader. I protect you because you work for me. If you act like a fool and go against my interests, then I can’t protect you. As for these Korean groups, you have to remember that no matter what, the men who are in charge are just men—so they’re not much smarter than pigs. And we eat pigs. ([Location 3439](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=3439))
* 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. ([Location 3455](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=3455))
* Against the papered walls, the two bare lightbulbs attached to the ceiling by their electric cords made stark shadows, resembling two lonely gourds hanging from leafless vines. ([Location 3577](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=3577))
* He was suffering, and in a way, he could manage that; but he had caused others to suffer, and he did not know why he had to live now and recall the series of terrible choices that had not looked so terrible at the time. Was that how it was for most people? Since the fire, in the few moments when he felt clear and grateful to breathe without pain, Yoseb wanted to see the good in his life, but he couldn’t. He ([Location 3943](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=3943))
* Hansu never told him to study, but rather to learn, and it occurred to Noa that there was a marked difference. Learning was like playing, not labor. ([Location 4143](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=4143))
* His Presbyterian minister father had believed in a divine design, and Mozasu believed that life was like this game where the player could adjust the dials yet also expect the uncertainty of factors he couldn’t control. He understood why his customers wanted to play something that looked fixed but which also left room for randomness and hope. ([Location 4392](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=4392))
* She could not see his humanity, and Noa realized that this was what he wanted most of all: to be seen as human. ([Location 4629](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=4629))
* Her son could not feel compassion for those who did not try. ([Location 4693](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=4693))
* that to live without forgiveness was a kind of death with breathing and movement. ([Location 4724](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=4724))
* Finally, it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. ([Location 4837](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=4837))
* It was possible that he was in love with the way she wrote the number two—her parallel lines expressing a kind of free movement inside the invisible box that contained the ideograph’s strokes. If Risa wrote even an ordinary description on an invoice, Noa would pause to read it again, not because of what it said, but because he could detect that there was a kind of dancing spirit in the hand that wrote such elegant letters. ([Location 5332](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=5332))
* It was fair to say that almost everyone at the parlor wanted to make some extra money by gambling. However, the players also came to escape the eerily quiet streets where few said hello, to keep away from the loveless homes where wives slept with children instead of husbands, and to avoid the overheated rush-hour train cars where it was okay to push but not okay to talk to strangers. ([Location 5602](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=5602))
* But the Koreans back home aren’t changing, either. In Seoul, people like me get called Japanese bastards, and in Japan, I’m just another dirty Korean no matter how much money I make or how nice I am. ([Location 5631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=5631))
* airless room. ([Location 5912](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=5912))
* Every morning, Mozasu and his men tinkered with the machines to fix the outcomes—there could only be a few winners and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones. How could you get angry at the ones who wanted to be in the game? 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. ([Location 6057](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=6057))
* The Japanese said that Koreans had too much anger and heat in their blood. Seeds, blood. How could you fight such hopeless ideas? Noa had been a sensitive child who had believed that if he followed all the rules and was the best, then somehow the hostile world would change its mind. His death may have been her fault for having allowed him to believe in such cruel ideals. ([Location 6208](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=6208))
* Japan is not fucked because it lost the war or did bad things. Japan is fucked because there is no more war, and in peacetime everyone actually wants to be mediocre and is terrified of being different. ([Location 6590](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01GZY28JA&location=6590))