Mother does not exist, like water that has given life to a flower and then disappeared. Mothers live somewhere after giving birth to us.

The rhythm of my body is the same as my mother tongue. It is in this rhythm where I find sanctity, that I can return to my mother who is everywhere in the universe.

Men think women should do trivial things on the margins. They think women should be merely a seasoning for a dish. I feel anger and sorrow seeing this.

Our mothers who have gone are buried in our bodies. It can be said that we were born with dead mothers in our body.

I have to reach "the poetry condition" to write. Then it is as if the border around me is thinned or blurred or erased or disappeared or dead.

Women who have been disappeared by violence are howling. The voices of disappeared women are echoing. I sing with these voices.

Living in South Korea as a girl meant living under a lot of discrimination and limitation. It was the same in my university and in the Korean literary world I am involved in.

If you propose there is a feminism problem in Korea, somebody would point out that you are bringing up antiquated issues. No one acknowledges that discrimination against women is still widespread.

I came to grotesque language in the patriarchal culture under the dictatorship. The body that was broken into pieces is a sick body. I put the disease of this world and my sick body together.

Poems are ways of saying you clearly remember the day of your death and your tomb. When I am writing poetry, I relive my days when a woman inside me dies many times.

When anger and sorrow overflow, sometimes it becomes poetry.

At the end of the day, you control your happiness at peace.

Sometimes, the only way to exorcise old ghosts is to pack your bags and move in with them.

There is one rule in the garden that is above all others. You must give to nature more than you take. Obey it, and the earth will provide you in glorious abundance.

Not everyone's life is what they make it. Some people's life is what other people make it.

Fermentation is the exhalation of a substance through the admixture of a ferment which, by virtue of its spirit, penetrates the mass and transforms it into its own nature.

There is no escaping this fight. It is civilization or Jihadism. We can and should debate tactics; but the sides are clear enough.

I'm a very lucky girl.

Prayer in Jesus' name puts the crowning crown on God, because it glorifies Him through the Son and it pledges the Son to give to men 'whatsoever and anything' they shall ask.

I like things to feel a touch unfinished; sweatpants with heels, or tennis shoes with a trouser. Those things are important.

Well, if you're talking about perfection, I'll show you the image of my backside.