Quotes from Adam Johnson

He noted a depth and sadness in Sun Moon's eyes, the faint lines around them bespeaking a resoluteness in the face of loss, and it took everything in him to suppress the memory of Rumina. And then the idea of a portrait, of any person, placed over your heart, forever, seemed irresisitible. How was it that we didn't walk around with every person who mattered tattoed on us forever?

This feeling of being in proximity to something that's lost to you, it seems like my whole life right now.

Nonc's pretty okay with the man's death, but the notion that he'll never get dressed again, that he's to die in a gown, seems strange and impossible.

Jun Do had dealt with this his whole life, the ways it was impossible for people from normal families to conceive of a man in so much hurt that he couldn't acknowledge his own son, that there was nothing worse than a mother leaving her children, though it happened all the time, that "take" was a word people used for those who had so little to give as to be immeasurable.

Developments can happen right in front of you like that, you don't even see them.

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.

Let this story be an inspiration when dealing with the weak-minded who share your communal housing blocks and the selfish who use all the soap in your group bathing wells. Know that change is achievable and that happy endings do come, for this story promises to have the happiest ending you will ever hear

That's how he'd thought of most people—appearing in your life like foundlings on the doorstep, only to be swept away later as if by flood.

If there are ghosts on this earth, they are formed by the things you cannot utter, and they'll outlive the black in your teeth, burn hotter than any hole in your stomach. Untold stories take on lives of their own. They silently eat dinner with you. Still as shoe trees, they stand over you, watching you sleep. They'll make you pace all-night

he'd helped kidnap. Next to Mayumi Nota, the girl from

The longer the night, the shorter the morning

I know this," the Second Mate said. "A sexy girl thinks she can do anything.

Acts of heroism are easy—becoming a hero is a bitch.

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

But I held her in my heart, and would stay with her all my days, even if a great many of them were trying ones. If love dictated only in Russian, I would learn that thorny tongue.

sometimes the boys from Propaganda will nose around for a feel-good story to play to the citizens over the loudspeakers, but we're story takers, not storytellers.

Nonc is on his side, looking at a boy whose breathing is untroubled for all he's been through, though there's a lack of shine in his eyes, as if the little light in him might someday go out. His breath is clean and perfect, though, sweet-smelling.

In a gesture of socialist support, the Dear Leader placed his hand upon her.

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.

The wound of not knowing," Ga said to her. "That's the one that never heals".

He took a pull of beer and tried to think of one thing that North Korea could give him that would make his life better.

Jun Do remembered that he had no one that mattered to him, which was why his tattoo would be of an actress he'd never seen, taken from a calendar at the helm of a fishing boat.

With dark, Jun Do made his way down the fish-cart paths that led to the new cannery. The old cannery had had a bad batch of tins and many citizens were lost to botulism. The problem proved impossible to locate, so they built a new cannery next to the old one.

Do you think the Dear Leader's line should be read 'Love knows no replacement,' as if it's unthinkable to search for a substitute for love, or 'Love knows no replacement,' suggesting that love is sentient and is itself at a loss to comprehend its absence?