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Quotable

Best Lines from Queen of Tears

The lines that made Queen of Tears land — on a marriage that almost ended, then refused to.

Queen of Tears starts as a glossy chaebol farce — a department-store queen, her in-house divorce attorney husband, and a family that fights over trillions in won — then quietly becomes something sadder when a terminal diagnosis rearranges everyone's plans. The dialogue swings the same way: barbed and brittle in the boardroom, plain and bare on the rare nights Hae-in and Hyun-woo stop performing. Most of the lines fans hold onto are the small ones, the ones spoken half to the floor. Here are the ones worth keeping.

These are lines of dialogue from the series, attributed to the character who speaks them, and shared here for commentary and discussion.

On a marriage gone cold

There are no goodbyes in divorce.
Queen of Tears · S1E01

From the opening narration framing the couple as the wedding of the century gone sour, before the show reveals how far Hae-in and Hyun-woo have drifted.

I do love you, but if all I did was love you, no eating, no breathing, then I'd be six feet under.
Queen of Tears · S1E01

Spoken inside the Queens family circle, defending the calculation that comes with marrying into wealth rather than for love alone.

Why do I still feel like I'm standing alone in the middle of an empty field?
Queen of Tears · S1E04

Hae-in, surrounded by a husband and an entire household, naming the isolation of her marriage early in the run.

You couldn't hear me crying.
Queen of Tears · S1E05

Part of Hae-in's account of the distance that opened up between her and Hyun-woo over their three years together.

On dying, and being remembered

How is it possible I'll be dead while they keep on living?
Hong Hae-in · Queen of Tears · S1E03

Hae-in, soon after learning her brain tumor is inoperable, watching the family around her carry on as if nothing has changed.

It would be too much to ask you to remember me forever.
Queen of Tears · S1E06

From a letter Hae-in wrote before the marriage, surfacing once she believes she has only months left.

The memory of loving, and the memory of being loved.
Queen of Tears · S1E14

Hae-in weighing what she stands to lose to the surgery that may erase her past, ahead of the operation in Germany.

Baek Hyun-woo is a name I don't want to forget until the very end.
Queen of Tears · S1E15

From the notebook Hae-in left for herself, written to survive the memory loss the surgery was expected to bring.

On staying by your side

I can't survive without you, Hae-in.
Queen of Tears · S1E11

Hyun-woo to Hae-in, once the family learns of her illness and his hidden divorce plans collapse into something more honest.

If you wake up, and never wanna see me again, even then, I'll stay by your side.
Queen of Tears · S1E14

Hyun-woo's promise to Hae-in before the surgery that could leave her with no memory of him.

But no matter what happens, we always seem to end up together.
Queen of Tears · S1E16

Late in the finale, after the couple has been pulled apart and back together more than once across the season.