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.
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.
More Adam Johnson Quotes
-
-
. . . nobody every taught you loyalty . . .
ADAM JOHNSON -
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 JOHNSON -
Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past.
ADAM JOHNSON -
Acting upon a personal desire, whispering a hidden longing, revealing your true feelings
ADAM JOHNSON -
But people do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can’t live with what they’ve done.
ADAM JOHNSON -
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.
ADAM JOHNSON -
Had she never been hungry enough to eat a flower? Did she not know that you could eat daisies, daylilies, pansies, and marigolds?
ADAM JOHNSON -
What good’s a captive without her captor?
ADAM JOHNSON -
The next day, she was silent. For breakfast, she murdered an onion and served it raw.
ADAM JOHNSON -
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 JOHNSON -
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.
ADAM JOHNSON -
In my experience, ghosts are made up only of the living, people you know are out there but are forever out of range
ADAM JOHNSON -
[I]n communism, you’d threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.
ADAM JOHNSON -
Orphans are the only ones who get to choose their fathers, and they love them twice as much.
ADAM JOHNSON -
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!
ADAM JOHNSON -
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!
ADAM JOHNSON -
Still, I’d thought I’d had a unique look at North Korea, only to discover I was wrong.
ADAM JOHNSON -
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.
ADAM JOHNSON -
All the lessons you need to learn in life, he said, will be taught to you by your enemy.
ADAM JOHNSON -
Like putting a name to my problems would solve anything
ADAM JOHNSON -
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 JOHNSON -
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.
ADAM JOHNSON -
Imagine a world in which no writer has written a literary novel in sixty years.
ADAM JOHNSON -
I am a champion standing over the shadow of my former self.
ADAM JOHNSON -
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.
ADAM JOHNSON -
Imagine a place where not a single person has read a book that is truly about the character at its center.
ADAM JOHNSON