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.

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

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

. . . nobody every taught you loyalty . . .

I am a champion standing over the shadow of my former self.

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.

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.

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

A good story feels both surprising and inevitable, fresh and familiar.

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

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

Sometimes people who seem good end up being not as good as you might have hoped, you know?

Accept yourself in a way you are created

The NAA way is to operate from a servant's heart, and service will be returned to you exponentially.

Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay.

... Nine-year-old boys usually turn ten at some point. It's the nineteen-year-olds who have difficulty turning twenty.

Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.

I was thinking Im going to die but I'm not going to tap

The more the capacity to concentrate is developed, the more often the profound tranquility in work is achieved, then the clearer will be the manifestation of discipline within the child.

I like men with some belly who are a little over the hill.

The pressure for an actress to look good and be skeletally thin is insane and unrealistic and it's a subject I've been fascinated by.