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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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