Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master's Son
13 quotes
"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."
"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."
"Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past."
"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."
"Ga thought of how difficult it was to come to see the lies you told yourself, the ones that allowed you to function and move forward."
"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."
"Acts of heroism are easy—becoming a hero is a bitch."
"In this way, you’ll live forever."
"[I]n communism, you'd threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes."
"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"
"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."
"To survive in this world, you got to be many times a coward but at least once a hero"