The Orphan Master's Son: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

Rumina sang in Korean, and her dress was graphite, and she might as well have sung of a spider that spins white thread to capture her listeners.

Don’t be fooled by the Commander’s dashing uniform and cleanly parted hair—he is a tragic figure, who has far, far to fall before talk of redemption can begin.

“Ninety-nine-percent turnout?” Tommy marveled. “With democracy like that, I’m sure you’ll soon be over a hundred.”

“They never look up,” she said. “I sit out here all the time and watch them. Not one has ever looked up and caught me.”

The Captain said, “It’s not just because you’re the one who put all the stupid ideas in the Second Mate’s head. Or that you’re the one with the actress tattooed on your chest instead of a real woman, at home depending on you. It’s not because you’re the one who’s had military training in pain. It’s because no one ever taught you about family and sa

Mongnan was meticulous, and the catalog was complete. This box, he suddenly understood, was the closest thing his nation had to the phone book he’d seen in Texas.

What was it about English speakers that allowed them to talk into transmitters as if the sky were a diary?

It was Jun Do’s curse to be nocturnal in a nation without power at night, but it was his duty, too, like picking up a pair of oars at sunset or letting the loudspeakers fill your head as you sleep. Even the crew thought of her as rowing toward dawn, as if dawn was a metaphor for something transcendent or utopian.

“Today, tomorrow,” she said. “A day is nothing. A day is just a match you strike after the ten thousand matches before it have gone out.”