Will Johnson
Will Johnson
dog socialism communism
[I]n communism, you'd threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.
wise men piano
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.
stars dark night
The light, the sky, the water, they were all things you looked *through* during the day. At night, they were things you looked *into*. You looked *into* the stars, you looked *into* dark rollers and the surprising platinum flash of their caps.
people done
But people do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can't live with what they've done.
life flower rose
Had she never been hungry enough to eat a flower? Did she not know that you could eat daisies, daylilies, pansies, and marigolds? That hungry enough, a person could consume the bright faces of violas, even the stems of dandelions and the bitter hips of roses?
captives
What good's a captive without her captor?
enemy taught needs
All the lessons you need to learn in life, he said, will be taught to you by your enemy.
motivational self champion
I am a champion standing over the shadow of my former self.
people cheesy trying
I know it really sounds cheesy, but I did feel a duty to try to tell the stories of people who couldn't speak for themselves.
unique korea looks
I'd known that the visit would be highly scripted and that genuine interactions with citizens wouldn't be possible, since it's illegal for them to speak with foreigners. Still, I'd thought I'd had a unique look at North Korea, only to discover I was wrong.
country eye korea
The death of dictator Kim Jong-Il has cast all eyes on North Korea, a country without literature or freedom or truth.
book thinking light
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.
jobs motivation character
In America, the stories we tell ourselves and we tell each other in fiction have to do with individualism. Every person here is the center of his or her own story. And our job as people and as characters is to find our own motivations and desires, to overcome conflicts and obstacles toward defining ourselves so that we grow and change.
book character years
Imagine a world in which no writer has written a literary novel in sixty years. Imagine a place where not a single person has read a book that is truly about the character at its center.