Quotes from Adam Johnson

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.

the only way to shake your ghosts was to find them . . .

nobody every taught you loyalty . . .

Real stories like this, human ones, could get you sent to prison, and it didn't matter what they were about. It didn't matter if the story was about an old woman or a squid attack—if it diverted emotion from the Dear Leader, it was dangerous.

Even they couldn't dream of a world in which citizens voluntarily carried tracking devices, conducted self-surveillance and reported on

Do you feel for the man hungry enough to steal?" Commander Ga asked as they drove by. "Or for the men who must hunt him down?" "Isn't it the bird who suffers?" Sun Moon asked.

A good story feels both surprising and inevitable, fresh and familiar.

If only more people in life said, This is what I must have.

Christian talk, when said in a non-Christian way, scares these Southerners to death.

There is a talk that every father has with his son in which he brings the child to understand that there are ways we must act, things we must say, but inside, we are still us, we are family.

Inside, I'm assaulted by the evening propaganda broadcasts coming over the apartment's hardwired loudspeaker. There's one in every apartment and factory floor in Pyongyang

I find a tattered copy of 1984. I open the book and read a little. Of course it is fiction, but the author gets a few things right—the control, the scrutiny, the feeling that nothing can be spontaneous, that the slightest move carries consequences for your future. It evokes a feeling I haven't experienced in a long time, a sense that, even though you have a great job and house, there is no safe place to turn. The

The key to fighting in the dark is no different: you had to perceive your opponent, sense him, and never use your imagination. The darkness inside your head is something your imagination fills with stories that have nothing to do with the real darkness around you.

To survive in this world, you got to be many times a coward but at least once a hero

She was a believer, you know," the Captain said. "My wife. She thought socialism was the only thing that would make us strong again. There would be a difficult period, she always said, some sacrifices. And then things would be better. I didn't think I would miss that, you know. I didn't realize how much I needed someone to keep telling me why.

He had been the person who took. He'd been the one who was taken. And he'd been the one left behind. Next he would find out what it was like to be all three at once.

And then he closed his eyes and imagined Sun Moon, the one that was always within him...she was a calm presence, open-armed, ready to save him at all times. She wasn't leaving him, she wasn't going anywhere. And here the sharp pain in his chest subsided, and Commander Ga understood that the Sun Moon inside him was the pain reserve that would allow him to survive the loss of the Sun Moon before him.

Are there labor camps here?" he asked. "No," she said. "Mandatory marriages, forced-criticism sessions, loudspeaker?" She shook her head. "Then I'm not sure I could ever feel free here," he said.

Stories are factual...If a man and his story are in conflict it is the man who must change.....In America it is the man who matters not the story.

Endure what one must during the day. But please, can I not have some peace when darkness falls?

You know what you are?" she said. "You're a survivor who has nothing to live for.

the things that make us human: freedom, art, choice, identity, expression, love. And

Jun Do held the book, felt its soft cover. "I could read some with you," she said. "Do you know of Christ?" Jun Do nodded. "I've been briefed on him.

Sun Moon offered her Juche to him, and he gave her all he had of Songun policy.