Paul Yoon Quotes

It was as though someone, somewhere, were dreaming this and he had crossed into it without permission. Everything both familiar and foreign.

It occurred to her, watching him move through the crowd, that time, in some ways, had nothing to do with how you thought of someone. And she did not know how that was possible because time was, she thought, how you defined yourself. It was what made you and what finished you as well.

It was summer here and he wondered if there existed a different season for every corner of this world in this moment and the moments to come. Whether if you traveled fast and far enough you could witness a year passing in a single journey.

One time the scent of the old man appeared in the air: some combination of tobacco and citrus and soap. It was fleeting yet he was certain he had smelled it, but he did not know where it had come from, whether it had been someone at the window or from the shop itself, as though a part of the man remained in the tables, in the air of the boxes, in the fabrics themselves.

And yet he found comfort in the absence of telling.

But as he grew older he thought less of it, grew accustomed to the days lived. Each day he climbed the hill, as he used to, and helped build the factory. He visited the town. The seasons passed. Then the years. His father a curtained room. His mother, too. This blank space in his life that he was unable to paint.

Standing there, in his father's shed, he knew that there had been, between them, affection and even tenderness. That his father had never been unkind. That in their silences there had been a form of love. But he had never known him, had never been close to him in the way he witnessed other sons and their fathers.

This momentary bridge. The wonder of a shared memory, returned. Of a place once theirs and a life that had already been lived.