No One Writes Back Quotes

“Life is bearable when you have someone to write to, and someone who writes you back.”
― Eun-Jin Jang, No One Writes Back

“It feels as though the beginning and the end are intertwined, thus leading to a never-ending cycle. Surely this will not be the end. Just as it can't be considered the beginning. Just as it can't be determined where the beginning or the end is.”
― Eunjin Jang, No One Writes Back

“The past is always consecrated for the present, and the present is always sacrificed for the future.”
― Eun-Jin Jang, No One Writes Back

“I was never alone, not before my journey, not during my journey, and not after my journey.”
― Eun-Jin Jang, No One Writes Back

“Wajo looks at me without the slightest sign of hatred or resentment in his eyes. I feel terrible. His eyes seem to say that dogs do not know what hatred or resentment is.”
― Jang Eun-Jin, No One Writes Back

“In that moment, I felt, for the first time, that nothing brings so much joy in life as being approved of by someone.”
― Eunjin Jang, No One Writes Back

“Desire has a wicked habit of not knowing its place, and trying to go beyond that.”
― Eunjin Jang, No One Writes Back

“Reading over a letter you wrote the night before is an act of denying yourself. When you read it over, you’re bound to find at least one or two sentences you want to erase, like a mistake you made in the past. I don’t think you need to be ashamed of them, since they’re symptoms that occurred because you were too true to your feelings, or because you were full of courage. If we don’t allow ourselves to have courage at night, at least, we’ll have to live as cowards all our lives.”
― Jang Eun-Jin, No One Writes Back

“The good thing, though, is that there’s only one way to overcome despair. So we don’t have go through the painful process of choosing. That one way is to grit your teeth and go on living without dying.”
― Jang Eun-Jin, No One Writes Back

“The power of habit is great.”
― Eunjin Jang, No One Writes Back

“Even a festival of madness is bound to end at one point. Only loneliness and emptiness remain after a riotous festival. When it's over, the taboos that were lifted like magic will return like magic. I can hear the hour of taboos approaching step by step from far away. A lunatic, unable to deal with the aftermath of the festival, may send down a punishment of taboos. A night of madness may drive someone to madness.”
― Eunjin Jang, No One Writes Back

“The discord arises from the fact that we require different amounts of time to accept each other.”
― Eunjin Jang, No One Writes Back

“Everyone makes mistakes. The problem is when they repeat the same mistake over and over again.”
― Eunjin Jang, No One Writes Back

“Hope that's alive and moving can keep a person going until he falls into despair.”
― Eun-Jin Jang, No One Writes Back

“For you and for others, life begins in joy, but ends in sorrow.”
― Jang Eun-Jin, No One Writes Back

“It's always sad to say goodbye to a habit. Especially if it's contributed to the peace in your heart and in your daily life. Just as my journey has. Now I must get into a different kind of habit, and find myself in a different kind of life. For genuine peace and stability of mind.”
― Eun-Jin Jang, No One Writes Back

“There must be a very thick darkness, unfathomable to me, beyond those eyes. A universe where no star or moon rises despite its darkness. Now that I think about it, I've never given his darkness a serious thought, or made a genuine effort to understand darkness from his stance. But with those black eyes, he looks at my wet eyes in turn one after the other, as though he can see. Those eyes can't see, but they can talk. The eyes can't see, but I'm in those eyes for sure, alive and breathing. He sees me, and knows his universe. I'm sure that a moon rises, and stars fall, in that universe.”
― Eun-Jin Jang, No One Writes Back

“Your life would be a success if you had just one sentence to carve on your tombstone. They say that Stendhal spent his lifetime searching for the sentence to carve on his tombstone.”
― Eunjin Jang, No One Writes Back

“My name would be excluded from the address section in the yearbook, a professor would remember everyone's face except mine, and so on. And the countless mistakes in recordkeeping that often occured on paper. Whenever such things happened, I would cry out in my mind: Why me? Why do these things keep happening to me? Why me, of all the people in the world? I get left out. My life gets left out. When you're left out over and over again, you come to feel that you're left behind.”
― Eunjin Jang, No One Writes Back

“People think it's strange when you're alone in doing something that's usually done by two people. Watching a movie or eating, for instance, Like there's a rule that such things should be done by two or more people.”
― Eunjin Jang, No One Writes Back

“I often care what people think, too. But in the end, everyone is alone in the world. Everyone is alone, but not everyone thinks so.”
― Eun-Jin Jang, No One Writes Back

“In this world, lies go over better than the truth more often than not. Lies set your mind at unease, but your body at ease.”
― Eun-Jin Jang, No One Writes Back

“What I've learned on my journey is that the fewer destinations you have, the better. When there's no goal, there's no expectation, and when there's no expectation, there's no disappointment. Freedom is being able to go off when you feel like it.”
― Eun-Jin Jang, No One Writes Back

“Three years ago, my journey began with me stepping through that gate, and now, it comes to an end with me stepping through it again. Why does it feel as if the boundaries of the beginning and the end are so far apart, when in fact, they’re much too close together. The sense of distance probably comes from the human habit of separating and classifying and distinguishing, which sets the human heart at ease.”
― Jang Eun-Jin, No One Writes Back

“Pain has come to an end for those who died, and has begun anew for those who remain alive. I don’t know which is worse.”
― Jang Eun-Jin, No One Writes Back

“Even a person with ninety-nine rooms sleeps in only one room. And even in that room, the maximum space he requires is only as big as his own body. The size of a coffin. A big room only makes you greedy. Because you keep making frantic efforts to fill it up with this and that. Death? When your room is small, you become familiar with death, and are no longer afraid of it.”
― Jang Eun-Jin, No One Writes Back

“A habit is something more mysterious and confounding than affection. Affection is a conscious thing, but habits are subconscious. I thought at the time that perhaps what’s real is dominated by the subconscious.”
― Jang Eun-Jin, No One Writes Back

“I know an unhappy person who can’t write anything unless he’s sitting at his desk in his room with his laptop. [...] No matter what spectacular places he visited, he couldn’t enjoy himself because he had only his own room in mind. He was the happiest when he was sitting at his desk in his room, traveling with his laptop. In the end, he became someone who couldn’t come out of his room all his life. He did write, of course, but he couldn’t be a world-renowned novelist. He could write things that were only as big as the room in which he stayed.”
― Jang Eun-Jin, No One Writes Back

“Writers by nature like to observe, pry, and meddle.”
― Jang Eun-Jin, No One Writes Back

“The easiest way to confirm the truth is to put it through the litmus test of deceit.”
― Jang Eun-Jin, No One Writes Back