“I would live your life so much better than you, if I had your face.”
―
Frances Cha,
If I Had Your Face
“Rich people are fascinated by happiness,” she said. “It’s something they find maddening.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“I will build myself up so high in such a short time that when he leaves me, I will become a lightning storm, a nuclear apocalypse.I will not come out of this with nothing.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“Most people have no capacity for comprehending true darkness, and then they try to fix it anyway.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“For all its millions of people, Korea is the size of a fishbowl and someone is always looking down on someone else. That's just the way it is in this country, and the reason why people ask a series of rapid-fire questions the minute they meet you. Which neighborhood do you live in? Where did you go to school? Where do you work? Do you know so-and-so? They pinpoint where you are on the national scale of status, then spit you out in a heartbeat.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“...you have to work and work and work for a salary that isn’t even enough to buy a house or pay for childcare, and you sit at a desk until your spine twists, and your boss is somehow incompetent and a workaholic at the same time and at the end of the day you have to drink to bear it all.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“In New York, you can talk to anyone about anything at any time and have a conversation so long you'll fall a little in love with that person, and then never see them again.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“It's basic human nature, this need to look down on someone to feel better about yourself.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“In America, one of my professors said once that the best art comes from an unbearable life—if you live through it, that is.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“Why would you want to bring more children into this world so that they can suffer and be stressed their entire lives? And they’ll disappoint you and you will want to die. And you’ll be poor” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“I wanted to reach out and shake her by the shoulders. Stop running around like a fool, I wanted to say. You have so much and you can do anything you want.I would live your life so much better than you, if I had your face.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“I have no desire to stay past midnight every night for a company that treats me like an ant to be crushed by the heel of a shoe.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“But I grew up not knowing the difference between a bearable life and an unbearable life, and by the time I discovered there was such a thing, it was too late.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“I want them to think I’m stupid,” she said to me once. “No expectation is nice. It gives you a lot of time to think.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“I know, because I was in love with a poor man once. He could not pay to spend time with me and I could not afford to spend time with him.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“Us girls, we have been trained for years: “Say that you were the one who wanted to sleep with the customer. You just wanted some money. Got it?” So the girl gets jailed and fined for prostitution, and vilified in society as someone who does this for easy money. The girls who die in the process—the ones who are beaten to death or the ones who kill themselves—they don’t even make the news.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“She doesn’t understand that I will never have the capacity to shoulder the responsibility of another life when I am scrambling like a madman in my own.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“In a way, I will be glad when we are almost home and the scenery will turn into rice fields and farm plots, and I will be reminded of how far I have come, instead of what I cannot reach.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“Sometimes, when he is holding me and I feel like I am liquid in his arms, I wonder if anything else in my life will seem real after this. It is as if I traveled beyond the earth and reached out and touched a burning star, and it is both endurable and terrifying.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“Rich people are fascinated by happiness,” she said. “It’s something they find maddening.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“I will build myself up so high in such a short time that when he leaves me, I will become a lightning storm, a nuclear apocalypse.I will not come out of this with nothing.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“Most people have no capacity for comprehending true darkness, and then they try to fix it anyway.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“For all its millions of people, Korea is the size of a fishbowl and someone is always looking down on someone else. That's just the way it is in this country, and the reason why people ask a series of rapid-fire questions the minute they meet you. Which neighborhood do you live in? Where did you go to school? Where do you work? Do you know so-and-so? They pinpoint where you are on the national scale of status, then spit you out in a heartbeat.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“...you have to work and work and work for a salary that isn’t even enough to buy a house or pay for childcare, and you sit at a desk until your spine twists, and your boss is somehow incompetent and a workaholic at the same time and at the end of the day you have to drink to bear it all.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“In New York, you can talk to anyone about anything at any time and have a conversation so long you'll fall a little in love with that person, and then never see them again.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“It's basic human nature, this need to look down on someone to feel better about yourself.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“In America, one of my professors said once that the best art comes from an unbearable life—if you live through it, that is.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“Why would you want to bring more children into this world so that they can suffer and be stressed their entire lives? And they’ll disappoint you and you will want to die. And you’ll be poor” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“I wanted to reach out and shake her by the shoulders. Stop running around like a fool, I wanted to say. You have so much and you can do anything you want.I would live your life so much better than you, if I had your face.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“I have no desire to stay past midnight every night for a company that treats me like an ant to be crushed by the heel of a shoe.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“But I grew up not knowing the difference between a bearable life and an unbearable life, and by the time I discovered there was such a thing, it was too late.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“I want them to think I’m stupid,” she said to me once. “No expectation is nice. It gives you a lot of time to think.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“I know, because I was in love with a poor man once. He could not pay to spend time with me and I could not afford to spend time with him.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“Us girls, we have been trained for years: “Say that you were the one who wanted to sleep with the customer. You just wanted some money. Got it?” So the girl gets jailed and fined for prostitution, and vilified in society as someone who does this for easy money. The girls who die in the process—the ones who are beaten to death or the ones who kill themselves—they don’t even make the news.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“She doesn’t understand that I will never have the capacity to shoulder the responsibility of another life when I am scrambling like a madman in my own.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“In a way, I will be glad when we are almost home and the scenery will turn into rice fields and farm plots, and I will be reminded of how far I have come, instead of what I cannot reach.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
“Sometimes, when he is holding me and I feel like I am liquid in his arms, I wonder if anything else in my life will seem real after this. It is as if I traveled beyond the earth and reached out and touched a burning star, and it is both endurable and terrifying.” ― Frances Cha, If I Had Your Face
