Imagine a world in which no writer has written a literary novel in sixty years.
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
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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 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.
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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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“A name isn’t a person.” Ga said. “Don’t ever remember someone by their name.
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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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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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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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Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past.
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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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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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. . . nobody every taught you loyalty . . .
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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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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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What good’s a captive without her captor?
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Still, I’d thought I’d had a unique look at North Korea, only to discover I was wrong.
ADAM JOHNSON