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The Orphan Master's Son QUOTES

The Orphan Master's Son QUOTES

1 " 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. "

― Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master's Son

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

― Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master's Son

3 " 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 , The Orphan Master's Son

4 " 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. "

― Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master's Son

5 " 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. "

― Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master's Son

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

― Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master's Son

7 " 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 , The Orphan Master's Son

8 " 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 "

― Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master's Son

9 " I wonder of what you must daily endure in America, having no government to protect you, no one to tell you what to do. Is it true you're given no ration card, that you must find food for yourself? Is it true that you labor for no higher purpose than paper money? What is California, this place you come from? I have never seen a picture. What plays over the American loudspeakers, when is your curfew, what is taught at your child-rearing collectives? Where does a woman go with her children on Sunday afternoons, and if a woman loses her husband, how does she know the government will assign her a good replacement? With whom would she curry favor to ensure her children got the best Youth Troop leader? "

― Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master's Son

10 " 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. "

― Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master's Son

11 " To survive in this world, you got to be many times a coward but at least once a hero "

― Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master's Son

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

― Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master's Son

13 " In this way, you’ll live forever. "

― Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master's Son

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

― Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master's Son

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

― Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master's Son

16 " Real stories like this, human ones, could get you sent to prison, and it didn’t matter what they were about. It didn’t matter if the story was about an old woman or a squid attack—if it diverted emotion from the Dear Leader, it was dangerous. "

― Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master's Son

17 " Inside, I’m assaulted by the evening propaganda broadcasts coming over the apartment’s hardwired loudspeaker. There’s one in every apartment and factory floor in Pyongyang "

― Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master's Son

18 " Our rival interrogation team is the Pubyok, named after the "floating wall" defenders that saved Pyongyang from invaders in 1136. There are only a dozen or so left, old men with silver crewcuts who walk in a row like a wall and truly believe they can float, stealthy as ghosts, from one citizen to the next, interrogating them as the wind interrogates the leaves. "

― Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master's Son

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

― Adam Johnson , The Orphan Master's Son

20 " 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 , The Orphan Master's Son