For an entire populace, change, growth, and spontaneity were dangerous. Acting upon a personal desire, whispering a hidden longing, revealing your true feelings - all the human actions we think of as essential to a character - had be censored by the self lest they be punished by the state.

"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."

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?

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

Life brings what it brings. I might be young but I've learnt this: prepare for each blind corner with your strongest shoulder dropped, ready to smash through whatever is thrown at you next. Once the dust clears you will be standing tall, a champion, a victor. NOTHING will be able to knock you down once you've taken the biggest hits this life has to offer, so come on life, BRING IT!

For an entire populace, change, growth, and spontaneity were dangerous. Acting upon a personal desire, whispering a hidden longing, revealing your true feelings - all the human actions we think of as essential to a character - had be censored by the self lest they be punished by the state.

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.