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

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Adam Johnson
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: July 12
Academic
Novelist
University Teacher
Writer
South Dakota
United States
Writing
Didn
Alone
Screen
Even
Stories
Story
Screens
Going
Character
Less
Staring
Work
Littles
Fact
Romantic
Good
Anything
Process
Cat
Find
Facts
Characters
Trickier
Little
Next
Paper
Edgy
Hard
True
Changed
Blank

More quotes by Adam Johnson

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. . . nobody every taught you loyalty . . .
Adam Johnson
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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!
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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.
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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
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What good's a captive without her captor?
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I am a champion standing over the shadow of my former self.
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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
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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
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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.
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Like putting a name to my problems would solve anything
Adam Johnson
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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
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All the lessons you need to learn in life, he said, will be taught to you by your enemy.
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The next day, she was silent. For breakfast, she murdered an onion and served it raw.
Adam Johnson
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Orphans are the only ones who get to choose their fathers, and they love them twice as much.
Adam Johnson
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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
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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