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.
ADAM JOHNSONLife 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.
ADAM JOHNSONAll the lessons you need to learn in life, he said, will be taught to you by your enemy.
ADAM JOHNSONWhat’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.
ADAM JOHNSONLike putting a name to my problems would solve anything
ADAM JOHNSONThe next day, she was silent. For breakfast, she murdered an onion and served it raw.
ADAM JOHNSONTo keep someone alive, you put them inside you, you put their face on your heart. Then, no matter where you are, they’re always with you because they’re a part of you.”
ADAM JOHNSONWhat good’s a captive without her captor?
ADAM JOHNSONIn my experience, ghosts are made up only of the living, people you know are out there but are forever out of range
ADAM JOHNSONThe 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.
ADAM JOHNSONBut people do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can’t live with what they’ve done.
ADAM JOHNSONI’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 JOHNSONToday, 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.
ADAM JOHNSONImagine a world in which no writer has written a literary novel in sixty years.
ADAM JOHNSONOrphans are the only ones who get to choose their fathers, and they love them twice as much.
ADAM JOHNSONImagine a place where not a single person has read a book that is truly about the character at its center.
ADAM JOHNSONI 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.
ADAM JOHNSON