Adam Johnson Quotes

• Orphans are the only ones who get to choose their fathers, and they love them twice as much.

  Adam Johnson

  Father, Orphan

  48 Copy quote

• The next day, she was silent. For breakfast, she murdered an onion and served it raw.

  Adam Johnson

  Next Day, Onions, Breakfast

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  Hard Work, Writing, Character

  10 Copy quote

• Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past.

  Adam Johnson

  Past, Imagination, Use

  Adam Johnson (2012). “The Orphan Master's Son”, p.109, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Motivational, Adversity, Overcoming

  6 Copy quote

• I am a champion standing over the shadow of my former self.

  Adam Johnson

  Motivational, Self, Champion

  8 Copy quote

• [I]n communism, you'd threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.

  Adam Johnson

  Dog, Socialism, Communism

  Adam Johnson (2012). “The Orphan Master's Son”, p.136, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• But people do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can't live with what they've done.

  Adam Johnson

  People, Done

  Adam Johnson (2012). “The Orphan Master's Son”, p.68, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Gone, Today, Tomorrow

  6 Copy quote

• All the lessons you need to learn in life, he said, will be taught to you by your enemy.

  Adam Johnson

  Enemy, Needs, Lessons

  Adam Johnson (2012). “The Orphan Master's Son”, p.236, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Jobs, Motivation, Character

  4 Copy quote

• What good's a captive without her captor?

  Adam Johnson

  Captives

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Inspiration, Ideas, Stories

  "The Call For Collaboration" by Adam Johnson, therumpus.net. March 3, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Jobs, Character, Korea

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Wise, Men, Piano

  9 Copy quote

• "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

  Heart, Names, Alive

  "The Orphan Master's Son".

  4 Copy quote

• Like putting a name to my problems would solve anything

  Adam Johnson

  Names, Problem, Solve

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Character, Years

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Life, Flower, Rose

  Adam Johnson (2012). “The Orphan Master's Son”, p.252, Random House

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  Real, Imagination, Darkness

  Adam Johnson (2012). “The Orphan Master's Son”, p.15, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Stars, Dark, Night

  Adam Johnson (2012). “The Orphan Master's Son”, p.41, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• . . . nobody every taught you loyalty . . .

  Adam Johnson

  Loyalty, Taught

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Motivational, Taken, Dust

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  People, Forever, Ghost

  4 Copy quote

• The death of dictator Kim Jong-Il has cast all eyes on North Korea, a country without literature or freedom or truth.

  Adam Johnson

  Country, Eye, Korea

  4 Copy quote

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