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.
ADAM JOHNSONThat hungry enough, a person could consume the bright faces of violas, even the stems of dandelions and the bitter hips of roses?
More Adam Johnson Quotes
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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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Orphans are the only ones who get to choose their fathers, and they love them twice as much.
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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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. . . nobody every taught you loyalty . . .
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For an entire populace, change, growth, and spontaneity were dangerous.
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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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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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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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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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Still, I’d thought I’d had a unique look at North Korea, only to discover I was wrong.
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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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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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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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“A name isn’t a person.” Ga said. “Don’t ever remember someone by their name.
ADAM JOHNSON






