Quotes from Adam Johnson

the inmates keep their distance and do what inmates always seem to do: affirm and reassure, make the future seem doable.

The Second Mate closed his eyes for a moment. He removed his shoes, and now he had none. The look in his eyes said that the wrongest thing that had ever happened was happening right now. And then the shoes slipped from his hand and into the water. He pretended to look at the horizon so that no one would see his face.

Commander Ga went on, "I know you pretended to be asleep one morning to give me more time to study you, to allow me to see the knot in your collarbone where someone had hurt you. You let me see the scars on your knees, scars that tell me you once knew real work. You wanted me to know the real you.

Honestly," Jun Do said. "I don't even know why you guys do this, what's the point of tattooing your wife's face on your chest?" [...] "There is only one reason," the Captain said. "It's because it places her in your heart forever.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

In my experience, ghosts are made up only of the living, people you know are out there but are forever out of range

She's read every word I've written," he said. "That's the truest way to know someone's heart.

The darkness inside your head is something your imagination fills with stories that have nothing to do with the real darkness around you.

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.

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

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....But in America, people's stories change all the time. In America, it is the man who matters.

Like putting a name to my problems would solve anything

It's called a gui-tar. It's used to perform American rural music. It's said to be especially popular in Texas," he told her. "It's also the instrument of choice for playing 'the blues,' which is a form of American music that chronicles the pain caused by poor decision making.

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.

Being in an M.F.A. is like living in a sci-fi biosphere on an alien planet, where everyone shares your obscure visionary notions: namely, that literature matters, that English professors know more than other people, that typing, alone, in a library, is what everyone should be doing on a Friday night. Better to tell strangers that speaking Klingon is what turns you on.

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." He put his hands on their shoulders. "It's you that matter, not your names. It's the two of you I'll never forget.

Inside is where the son and the father will always be holding hands.

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