Keagan Kang Quotes

I love the pleasure of finding the same truth in two different places. It has a lot to do with a soul. ~ Eyvind Kang

I want to affirm that thinking and living, knowing and doing, theory and practice intersect. ~ Namsoon Kang

The more projects you do, the more actors you meet, the more people you meet, it's harder and harder to give your heart and your complete attention or absolute sincerity to that person. ~ Sung Kang

I believe that music should be grown on trees, to be plucked like a fruit without the extravagance of harvest. ~ Eyvind Kang

Religion is about hospitality, solidarity, and responsibility or it is nothing at all. ~ Namsoon Kang

She watches the streaks of rain lashing the window, with the untouched steadiness unique to those accustomed to solitude. ~ Han Kang

On a studio film, you don't have to worry about running out of film or messing up your costumes; you have five other sets of it. Studio films make you the most comfortable so you can just act. ~ Sung Kang

When I started acting, I hoped I could make some kind of positive contribution to this world. When I get a letter from some kid in Nebraska saying that, prior to Han, nobody wanted to be his friend because Asians weren't cool if they weren't into martial arts - Now he's accepted and recognized as a human being. That's pretty awesome, right? ~ Sung Kang

Never look at what you want to change. Always look at what has changed. ~ Jane Kang

_For what ends_ does one claim cosmopolitanism? _Whose interest_ does it serve? ~ Namsoon Kang

Who approaches collaboration with agenda in terms of content? The agenda is only in terms of process, which is generosity, listening, careful thinking. ~ Eyvind Kang

After you died I couldn't hold a funeral,
So these eyes that once beheld you became a shrine.
These ears that once heard your voice became a shrine.
These lungs that once inhaled your breath became a shrine. ~ Han Kang

At the time, I remained relatively calm before that spectacle of horrors, which is perhaps the most telling indication of just how desensitized I had become. The more I witnessed such atrocities and rubbed shoulders with death, the more I desired to stay alive, no matter the cost. ~ Kang Chol-Hwan

Who are theologians? What kind of self-identity could or should a theologian claim? Should a theologian be a defender or transmitter of Christian _tradition_? What if the _tradition_ itself carries a dark side, implicitly or explicitly, bounded by religious or cultural superiorism, ethnocentrism, homophobism, exclusive nationalism, sexism, racism, and so forth? What kind of _identity_ would then justify my rule as theologian? This question has been lingering in my mind throughout the time I have been working on cosmopolitan theology. it may sound simple, but for me the identity issue has been fundamental. ~ Namsoon Kang

Listening is active. It's like vision. It's like the idea of the eye projecting light, which I've heard is what children and infants say when they're asked to explain vision - that the eye projects light, rather than just receives it. ~ Eyvind Kang

We established most of our self-beliefs during our childhood, but they were based on our limited understanding of the world around us. They are either flawed or have become outdated. We can't take these beliefs at face value anymore. ~ Yong Kang Chan

Yes, I am aware of the enticements required to obtain them," Kang replied with distaste. "I believe the Russians could teach the West a thing or two about capitalistic extortion. ~ Clive Cussler

Trust is essential when you're planning to lie to everyone you know. ~ Lydia Kang

She made no move to investigate the unfamiliar space, and showed none of the emotions that one might expect. It seemed enough for her to just deal with whatever it was that came her way, calmly and without fuss. Or perhaps it was simply that things were happening inside her, terrible things, which no one else could even guess at, and thus it was impossible for her to engage with everyday life at the same time. If so, she would naturally have no energy left, not just for curiosity or interest but indeed for any meaningful response to all the humdrum minutiae that went on on the surface. ~ Han Kang

March 24, 2018

How long do souls linger by the side of their bodies?
Do they really flutter away like some kind of bird? Is that what trembles the edges of the candle flame? ~ Han Kang, Human Acts

One should regard one's religious or denominational affiliation as a point of departure, a point of entry, not the point of arrival because on cannot confine God to a particular religion or faith tradition, and therefore should not claim one's exclusive ownership of God. Regarding one's religious or denominational affiliation as _accidentality_; not as _inevitability_, is important in religious discourse and practice because such a sense of _accidentality_ of one's affiliation allows a space of _alterity_ of reciprocal contestation and challenge, and a space of planetary gaze that sees others as fellow human beings, _regardless_. ~ Namsoon Kang

Although I believe identity politics '"produces limited but real empowerment for its participants," it is important to note that it contains significant problems: first, its essentialist tendency; second, its fixed _we-they_ binary position; third, its homogenization of diverse social oppression; fourth, its simplification of the complexity and paradox of being privileged and unprivileged; and fifth its ruling out of intersectional space of diverse forms of oppression in reality. ~ Namsoon Kang

Looking at herself in the mirror, she never forgot that death was hovering behind that face. Faint yet tenacious, like black writing bleeding through thin paper. ~ Han Kang

Free love is vibrator slogan. ~ Jay Caspian Kang

All these emotions are coming from one thing - sound. It's not coming from your experiences in life, your childhood. It's related to those things, but it's being triggered by the sound. ~ Eyvind Kang

Cosmopolitanism, ... , _speaks_ about the urgent need for and the significance of relocating our discourse on, ... , the scope and application of rights and justice for every singular human being regardless of the person's birth and belonging. ~ Namsoon Kang

Life isn't about being strong or pretending we are strong to impress others. It takes courage to be authentic with our feelings and acknowledge that real strength comes from recognizing our moments of weakness. ~ Yong Kang Chan

The more stubborn the isolation, the more vivid these unlooked-for fragments, the more oppressive their weight. So that it seems the place I flee to is not so much a city on the other side of the world as further into my own interior. ~ Han Kang

When you're listening to music, you listen to it with a friend one day and it sounds one way. You listen to it with another friend the next day, and it sounds a little different. Sometimes the greatest pleasure of listening is not the music that you're listening to; it's the person that you're listening to it with. ~ Eyvind Kang

I am not the best but I'm living with my best , I learned that effort doesn't betray like people ~ Kang Gary

You can't change the outside without changing the inside. ~ Yong Kang Chan

Now the question we must ask is ... what kind of _practices_ [theology] motivates, what kind of _gaze_ onto others, the guest, the new arrivant, it offers us to carry with us; _not_ who my neighbors are _but_ to whom I am being a neighbor. ~ Namsoon Kang

The cosmopolitan gaze of planetary love and hospitality _is_ what constitutes being _religious_. ~ Namsoon Kang

Theologians are to look to the _beyond_-community–– _beyond_ nationality; skin-color, gender; sexual orientation, citizenship, religious affiliation––because God, the Divine, who is the primary frame of reference for theologians, is for, with, in, among those individual human beings. It is to reaffirm the sheer truth: No one is better or worse, superior or inferior than any other; and, 'Ich bin du, wenn Ich Ich bin' [I am you, when Iam I.] ~ Namsoon Kang

The more you don't want to be like your parents, the more you will resemble them. ~ Yong Kang Chan

I have dreams too, you know. Dreams…and I could let myself dissolve
into them, let them take me over…but surely the dream isn't all there is? We have to wake up at some
point, don't we? Because…because then… ~ Han Kang

The question is not, therefore, _whether_ a theory is grand or small, or whether it is universal/global or particular/local, but _what function_ a theory plays and _whose interest_ it serves. ~ Namsoon Kang

I believe theology should be about one's way of life, a kind of gaze into onesself and others, and a mode of one's profound existence in the world. ~ Namsoon Kang

It's the soldiers, not him, that your death should have weighed on, so why did he grow so old before his time, so much quicker than all his friends? ~ Han Kang, Human Acts

But behind every misguided treatment - from Ottomans eating clay to keep the plague away to Victorian gents sitting in a mercury steam room for their syphilis to epilepsy sufferers sipping gladiator blood in ancient Rome - is the incredible power of the human desire to live. ~ Lydia Kang

I believe that dreaming an _impossible_ world, is itself the task of theologies and that the disparity between _the world-as-it-is_ (reality) and _the world-as-it-ought-to-be_ (ideality) is where a prophetic call_ comes in. ~ Namsoon Kang

Soundlessly, and without fuss, some tender thing deep inside me broke. Something that, until then, I hadn't even realized was there. ~ Han Kang

I, faggot Wenqing Kang, Ph. D. in History from UC Santa Cruz, do solemnly swear that homosexual relationships between men are more enjoyable and more harmonious than heterosexual relationships. ~ Bill Gaede

Cosmopolitan theology affirms and radicalizes the belief that the Divine creates each and every human being as equal to every one else as a _citizen-of-the-cosmos and that no one is either superior or inferior to the other. ~ Namsoon Kang

Sand
And she frequently forgot,
That her body (all our bodies) is a house of sand.
That it had shattered and is shattering still.
Slipping stubbornly through fingers. ~ Han Kang