“There really was nothing firm, nothing certain. Even here, even at this place where he thought he’d found something permanent—everything could change in a day. Everything could be lost so quickly.”

“There's no such thing as nothing. In every nothing, there's a something. In fact, there could be everything!”

“Everyone loves something for nothing...even if it costs everything.”

“There's nothing that says you can't change." "Not even if it changes everything else?" I shook my head. "Not even then.”

“If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together. But underneath the words, at the center, like the center of the Square, it all came out even. Everything could change, yet nothing would be lost. If you saw the numbers you could see that, the balance, the pattern. You saw the foundations of the world. And they were solid.”

“Kyung-sook's mother had taken it as an example that even if you started with nothing, with enough studying, one could accomplish everything.”