“I know it really sounds cheesy, but I did feel a duty to try to tell the stories of people who couldn’t speak for themselves.”

And secretly, he’d be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change.

Still, I’d thought I’d had a unique look at North Korea, only to discover I was wrong.

Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past.

Where we are from… [s]tories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro.

. . . nobody every taught you loyalty . . .

The darkness inside your head is something your imagination fills with stories that have nothing to do with the real darkness around you.

Sometimes in life, things happen that will knock you back. Hell, you may get beaten to your knees but you must never ALLOW this world to knock you down!

The death of dictator Kim Jong-Il has cast all eyes on North Korea, a country without literature or freedom or truth.

But, in North Korea, it’s just the opposite. There’s one story. It’s written by the Kim regime. And 23 million people are conscripted to be secondary characters.

Imagine a world in which no writer has written a literary novel in sixty years.

For an entire populace, change, growth, and spontaneity were dangerous.

A good story feels both surprising and inevitable, fresh and familiar.

Had she never been hungry enough to eat a flower? Did she not know that you could eat daisies, daylilies, pansies, and marigolds?

That hungry enough, a person could consume the bright faces of violas, even the stems of dandelions and the bitter hips of roses?

Acting upon a personal desire, whispering a hidden longing, revealing your true feelings

Once the dust clears you will be standing tall, a champion, a victor. NOTHING will be able to knock you down once you’ve taken the biggest hits this life has to offer, so come on life, BRING IT!

What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?

I also love a good cheesy movie, and I’m kind of addicted to my computer.

I think dates considered super corny and cheesy – whether it’s going bowling or miniature golf or something where you can be competitive and just have fun with each other – those always make the most memorable dates!

I miss my Dad. My Dad loved cheesy monster movies, so we’d have Godzilla movie marathons. Those are some of my favorite memories, laughing at how the monster outfits were so bad, like black garbage bags for heads.