All the lessons you need to learn in life, he said, will be taught to you by your enemy.
ADAM JOHNSONStill, I’d thought I’d had a unique look at North Korea, only to discover I was wrong.
More Adam Johnson Quotes
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That hungry enough, a person could consume the bright faces of violas, even the stems of dandelions and the bitter hips of roses?
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But people do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can’t live with what they’ve done.
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Like putting a name to my problems would solve anything
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I’d known that the visit would be highly scripted and that genuine interactions with citizens wouldn’t be possible, since it’s illegal for them to speak with foreigners.
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Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past.
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Acting upon a personal desire, whispering a hidden longing, revealing your true feelings
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What good’s a captive without her captor?
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What’s less romantic than staring alone at a blank screen? And edgy? I’ve changed the cat little because I didn’t know what my characters were going to say next.
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Imagine a place where not a single person has read a book that is truly about the character at its center.
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For an entire populace, change, growth, and spontaneity were dangerous.
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A good story feels both surprising and inevitable, fresh and familiar.
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The urge to create a fictional narrative is a mysterious one, and when an idea comes, the writer’s sense of what a story wants to be is only vaguely visible through the penumbra of inspiration.
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The darkness inside your head is something your imagination fills with stories that have nothing to do with the real darkness around you.
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Conjure up all the strength you have and drive through whatever it is keeping you on your knees. Build up the strength and your knees may never buckle again!
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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.
ADAM JOHNSON