Past Lives is a South Korean drama that follows two deeply connected childhood friends, Nora and Hae Sung. Following Nora’s family’s emigration from South Korea, they reunite for a single week, expressing their deep feelings of love and destiny for each other.
Celine Song’s film received great critic acclaim worldwide and gained two Academy Award nominations for Best Motion Picture of the Year, and Best Original Screenplay.
Here are the most memorable quotes from Past Lives.
- Nora: There is a word in Korean. In-Yun. It means “providence” or “fate”. But it’s specifically about relationships between people. I think it comes from Buddhism and reincarnation. It’s an In-Yun if two strangers even walk by each other in the street and their clothes accidentally brush. Because it means there must have been something between them in their past lives. If two people get married, they say it’s because there have been 8,000 layers of In-Yun over 8,000 lifetimes.
- Hae Sung: If you had never left Seoul, would I still have looked for you?
- Nora: Getting married is hard for idealistic people like you.
- Hae Sung: I liked you for who you are; and who you are is a person who leaves. Hae Sung: But for him, you’re the person who stays.
- Arthur: You dream in a language I can’t understand. It’s like there’s this whole place inside you I can’t go.
- Hae Sung: I didn’t know that liking your husband would hurt this much.
- Arthur: You make my world so much bigger and I’m wondering if I do the same for you?
- Hae Sung: What if this is a past life as well, and we are already something else to each other in our next life? Who do you think we are then?
- Nora’s Mom: It’s true that if you leave you lose things, but you also gain things, too.
- Nora’s Mom: You’d pee your pants all the time.
- Hae Sung: It wasn’t a joke for me. I tried really hard to find you.
- Hae Sung: I like this. Nora: What? Hae Sung: Just talking to you.
