The darkness inside your head is something your imagination fills with stories that have nothing to do with the real darkness around you.
ADAM JOHNSONI thought that, with so much current attention focused on the topic of North Korea, I might share what I think are three books which cast a rare light on the elusive realm of North Korea.
More Adam Johnson Quotes
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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.
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There, as a youth, your aptitude towards certain jobs is measured, and the rest of your life is dictated, whether you’ll be a fisherman or a farmer or an opera singer.
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All the human actions we think of as essential to a character – had be censored by the self lest they be punished by the state.
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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!
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Life brings what it brings. I might be young but I’ve learnt this: prepare for each blind corner with your strongest shoulder dropped, ready to smash through whatever is thrown at you next.
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Still, I’d thought I’d had a unique look at North Korea, only to discover I was wrong.
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What good’s a captive without her captor?
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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.
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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.
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Like putting a name to my problems would solve anything
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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.
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Had she never been hungry enough to eat a flower? Did she not know that you could eat daisies, daylilies, pansies, and marigolds?
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All the lessons you need to learn in life, he said, will be taught to you by your enemy.
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I am a champion standing over the shadow of my former self.
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For an entire populace, change, growth, and spontaneity were dangerous.
ADAM JOHNSON