Kyung-sook Shin

My, all three children are hanging from you now.

My dear daughter, you’re listening to all three children at once. Your body is trained to the needs of the children.

It would be easier for them to understand that hundreds of thousands of people died in the war than to understand you and me.

Because I just wanted to die. Because I thought it would be better to die. Everyone else made things difficult for me; only you didn’t ask me anything. You told me that any wound healed as time passed. That I shouldn’t think about anything, just calmly do what I was supposed to do. If you hadn’t been there I don’t know what would have happened to me; I was out of my mind with grief.