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.

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!

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.

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

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

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

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.