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Humans will not hesitate to lay down their own lives to rescue a child who had fallen onto the train tracks, yet are also perpetrators of appalling violence, like in Auschwitz. The broad spectrum of humanity, which runs from the sublime to the brutal, has for me been like a difficult homework problem ever since I was a child. You could say that my books are variations on this theme of human violence.

— Han Kang

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Humans will not hesitate to lay down their own lives to rescue a child who had fallen onto the train tracks, yet are also perpetrators of appalling violence, like in Auschwitz. The broad spectrum of humanity, which runs from the sublime to the brutal, has for me been like a difficult homework problem ever since I was a child. You could say that my books are variations on this theme of human violence." in the context of "As quoted in "Interview with Han Kang" in The White Review (March 2016)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Han Kang" (Quotes) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Han Kang

About Han Kang

Han Kang (born November 27, 1970) is a South Korean writer. She won the Man Booker International Prize for fiction in 2016 for her novel The Vegetarian. She was awarded Nobel Prize in literature in 2024.