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.
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.
More Adam Johnson Quotes
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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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[I]n communism, you’d threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.
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Acting upon a personal desire, whispering a hidden longing, revealing your true feelings
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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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Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past.
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A good story feels both surprising and inevitable, fresh and familiar.
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I 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.
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What good’s a captive without her captor?
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The next day, she was silent. For breakfast, she murdered an onion and served it raw.
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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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I am a champion standing over the shadow of my former self.
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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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But people do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can’t live with what they’ve done.
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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.
ADAM JOHNSON