Minsuk Kang 강민석

To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

I think that every writer should have a question they can ask that there is no end to the pursuit of. Every writer should have questions big enough and pressing enough and multi-faceted enough and unanswerable enough that they occupy their entire life, however long or short it is

Yes. I was nineteen or twenty. Harry Adams, who was the master of Trumbull College, said, “Do you want to come to this tea? This missionary from Japan is coming.” And so this nice white guy, who helped poor Koreans in Japan, came and gave a talk. There were about two of us in the entire room, and I couldn’t leave. He told the story about, I guess,... See more

What if animals could speak words?

I was at a Christmas party, a very literary party. It was kind of one of those drop-in things, and they said, “Well, where are you going now?” And I said, “I’m going to go to church,” because I was going to some evening service. They couldn’t believe it. They started laughing, and they didn’t mean to laugh, but they thought it was so preposterous... See more

"Twitter’s basic structure is about speaking, not listening — the platform’s formal innovation was that it made replies first-class citizens, equal to posts. Social gave everyone a voice, but it blocked our ear canals. The more complex or painful or shocking an event, the more it behooves us to “listen first, speak last.” But we don’t. There’s... See more

Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That's the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious... See more