In my experience, ghosts are made up only of the living, people you know are out there but are forever out of range
ADAM JOHNSONBut people do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can’t live with what they’ve done.
More Adam Johnson Quotes
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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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Writing is hard work, and if anything’s true about the process, it’s that fact that a good story is hard to find and even trickier to get on paper.
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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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Today, tomorrow,” she said. “A day is nothing. A day is just a match you strike after the ten thousand matches before it have gone out.
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Imagine a world in which no writer has written a literary novel in sixty years.
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A good story feels both surprising and inevitable, fresh and familiar.
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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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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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I am a champion standing over the shadow of my former self.
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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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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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“A name isn’t a person.” Ga said. “Don’t ever remember someone by their name.
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For an entire populace, change, growth, and spontaneity were dangerous.
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[I]n communism, you’d threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.
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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.
ADAM JOHNSON