Quotes from Adam Johnson

The successful forms of life are the parasites, the ones who bleed their environment to optimal exploitation, who stunt everything by taking a lion's share, who leave their hosts alive but shriveled. We

what did it mean, then, when his story was nothing, just a suggestion of a life?

Nonc looks out on the city. It looks like one of those end-times Bible paintings where everything is large and impressive, but when you look close, in all the corners, some major shit is befalling people.

And you could always tell ginger plants whose tap root had penetrated a corpse: the blooms were large, iridescent yellow, and it was hard to jerk loose a plant whose roots had hooked a rib below.

Where we are from," he said, "stories 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.

And don't forget, citizens: the ban on stargazing is still in effect.

history teacher allows him to write his reports graphically. (San Francisco!)

He held his grip on her arm. "What if something goes wrong? Have you thought of that? What if today is all there is?" "Today, tomorrow," she said. "A day is nothing. A day is just a match you strike after the ten

literature is a fiction that tells a deeper truth

son draws comics of Mongolian invasions and the Civil Rights Movement—

He held his grip on her arm. "What if something goes wrong? Have you thought of that? What if today is all there is?" "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.

so clear, everything. There was no such thing as abandonment, there were only people in impossible positions, people who had a best hope, or maybe only a sole hope.

the reports of which were so harrowing—forced abortions, amputations, communal executions—that I invented the blood harvesting as a less savage stand-in

It's just a thing that sometimes has to be done and even if thirty thousand suffer with you, you suffer alone." She

They only care about the story we're going to tell, and that story will be useful to them or it won't. When they ask you what happened to our flag and portraits, what story are you going to tell them?

I was terrified, on the verge of crying. My father said, "See, my mouth said that, but my hand, my hand was holding yours. If your mother ever must say something like that to me, in order to protect the two of you, know that inside, she and I are holding hands. And if someday you must say something like that to me, I will know it's not really you. That's inside. Inside is where the son and the father will always be holding hands." He reached out and ruffled my hair.

My wife is the most beautiful woman in her housing block. When I look into her eyes, I know exactly what she's thinking. I know what she's going to say before she says it. That's the definition of love, ask any old-timer." The

Jun Do was thinking about all the popular definitions of love, that it was a pair of bare hands clasping an ember to keep it alive, that it was a pearl that shines forever, even in the belly of the eel that eats the oyster, that love was a bear that feeds you honey from its claws.

How could you build a reputation in an environment where the only people who got names were the interns and the sad old retirees who clamber in to relive the glory days? While

Then, like a dutiful wife, Sun Moon bathed in his leftover wash water.

All this information," I say. "Yet the world is more mysterious than ever.

Jun Do saw a look he knew well from childhood, the look of a boy who thought the next day would be better. Those boys never lasted. Still, Jun Do liked them the most.

He'd spent his life with orphans, he understood their special plight, so he didn't hate them like most people did. He just wasn't one of them.

K? iztur?ties, sastopot homoseksu?li? Nor?diet, ka tas jums ir kaut kas nepieredz?ts, jo j?su dzimtaj? pus? t?du cilv?ku nav. P?c tam izturieties pret vi?u k? pret jebkuru ?u?hes p?tnieku, kas ieradies no ?rvalst?m, piem?ram, no Birmas, Ukrainas vai Kubas.