The Vegetarian

“‘I used to be dark’: There were times when he wanted to express it this way. I used to be dark. The monochrome world, entirely devoid of the colors he was now experiencing, had had a calmness that was beautiful in its way, but it wasn’t somewhere he could go back to. It seemed the happiness that had enabled him to feel that quiet peace was now lost to him forever. And yet he found himself unable to think of this as a loss. All of his energy was taken up in trying to cope with the excitement, the heightened awareness of living in the present moment.”

The Vegetarian, p. 107
By Han Kang
Published 2016 by Hogarth

Homegoing

“We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there, you begin to get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.”

Homegoing, pp. 226-7
By Yaa Gyasi
Published 2016 by Knopf