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.
Ga thought about reminding the Dear Leader that they lived in a land where people had been trained to accept any reality presented to them.
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.
Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past.
… that “take” was a word people used for those who had so little to give as to be immeasurable.
Ga thought of how difficult it was to come to see the lies you told yourself, the ones that allowed you to function and move forward.
This was the face that Ga had shown the world, that of a boy who had swallowed the things that had happened to him, but who wouldn’t understand what they meant for a long, long time.
A good story feels both surprising and inevitable, fresh and familiar.
[I]n communism, you’d threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.
The darkness inside your head is something your imagination fills with stories that have nothing to do with the real darkness around you
When the dogs returned, the Senator gave them treats from his pocket, and Jun Do understood that in communism, you’d threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes
This feeling of being in proximity to something that’s lost to you, it seems like my whole life right now.
To survive in this world, you got to be many times a coward but at least once a hero
Acts of heroism are easy—becoming a hero is a bitch.