Quotes by Adam Johnson - Page 1 | QuoteForever

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What good's a captive without her captor?
Adam Johnson / Novelist
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. . . nobody every taught you loyalty . . .
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Loyalty
Taught
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Like putting a name to my problems would solve anything
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Names
Problem
Solve
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I am a champion standing over the shadow of my former self.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Motivational
Champion
Self
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A good story feels both surprising and inevitable, fresh and familiar.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Familiar
Inevitable
Stories
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Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Imagination
Past
Use
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The next day, she was silent. For breakfast, she murdered an onion and served it raw.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Breakfast
Next Day
Onions
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All the lessons you need to learn in life, he said, will be taught to you by your enemy.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Enemy
Lessons
Needs
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Orphans are the only ones who get to choose their fathers, and they love them twice as much.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Father
Orphan
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But people do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can't live with what they've done.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Done
People
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[I]n communism, you'd threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Communism
Dog
Socialism
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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 / Novelist
Forever
Ghost
People
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The death of dictator Kim Jong-Il has cast all eyes on North Korea, a country without literature or freedom or truth.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Country
Dictator
Eye
Korea
Literature
North Korea
Cast
North
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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.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Cheesy
People
Trying
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Today, 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 Johnson / Novelist
Gone
Today
Tomorrow
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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.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Imagination
Darkness
Real
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It's true. In America, you can reinvent yourself at any turn. And, you know, if things aren't going well for you in life, everyone says, change, become someone different.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Life Change Yourself
Reinvent
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Imagine a world in which no writer has written a literary novel in sixty years. Imagine a place where not a single person has read a book that is truly about the character at its center.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Book
Character
Novel
Single Person
Sixty
Years
Where Character World
Character World Person
Center
Literary
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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.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Book
Elusive
Focused
Light
North Korea
Thinking
Rare
Cast
Current
North
Realm
Topic
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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.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Ideas
Inspiration
Stories
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The light, the sky, the water, they were all things you looked *through* during the day. At night, they were things you looked *into*. You looked *into* the stars, you looked *into* dark rollers and the surprising platinum flash of their caps.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Dark
Night
Stars
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"A name isn't a person." Ga said. "Don't ever remember someone by their name. To 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 Johnson / Novelist
Alive
Heart
Names
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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. Still, I'd thought I'd had a unique look at North Korea, only to discover I was wrong.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Citizens
Foreigners
Genuine
Illegal
Korea
North Korea
Unique
Would Be
Discover
Interactions
Scripted
Visit
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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? That hungry enough, a person could consume the bright faces of violas, even the stems of dandelions and the bitter hips of roses?
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Life
Flower
Rose
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For an entire populace, change, growth, and spontaneity were dangerous. Acting upon a personal desire, whispering a hidden longing, revealing your true feelings - 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 / Novelist
Censored
Character
Human Actions
Longing
Revealing
Self
Spontaneity
Thinking
Whispering
Actions
Essential
Hidden
Lest
Populace
Punished
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The reader feels as if he is in Chongjin, where starving people ate the bark off trees; or atop Mount Taesong with the elite of Pyongyang, whose existence is a mix of sadism and whimsy; or with the masses who are bombarded day and night with the propaganda of North Korea's alternate reality.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Bark
Bombarded
Day And Night
Existence
Propaganda
Reader
Sadism
Starving
Alternate
Ate
Elite
Masses
Mix
Mount
North
Trees
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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. 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 / Novelist
Character
Hard Work
Writing
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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! 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 / Novelist
Motivational
Adversity
Overcoming
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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. 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 / Novelist
Wise
Men
Piano
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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. 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 / Novelist
Jobs
Aptitude
Certain
Character
Fisherman
Korea
North Korea
Opera
Written
Youth
Characters
Dictated
Rest
Farmer
Singer
Towards
Measured
Million
Million People
North
Opera Singer
Regime
Secondary
Story
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In America, the stories we tell ourselves and we tell each other in fiction have to do with individualism. Every person here is the center of his or her own story. And our job as people and as characters is to find our own motivations and desires, to overcome conflicts and obstacles toward defining ourselves so that we grow and change.
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Jobs
Character
Defining
Fiction
Individualism
Motivation
Obstacles
Stories
Change Grow People
Overcome
Grow
Center
Characters
Conflicts
Desires
Motivations
Toward
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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. Once the dust clears you will be standing tall, a champion, a victor. NOTHING will be able to knock you down once you've taken the biggest hits this life has to offer, so come on life, BRING IT!
Adam Johnson / Novelist
Motivational
Dust
Taken
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