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

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.

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

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.

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

The death of dictator Kim Jong-Il has cast all eyes on North Korea, a country without literature or freedom or truth.

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?