“When the dogs returned, the Senator gave them treats from his pocket, and Jun Do understood that in communism, you’d threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes”

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

“... that "take" was a word people used for those who had so little to give as to be immeasurable.”

“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.”

“Writing is hard work, and if anything's true about the process, it's that fact that a good story is hard to find and even trickier to get on paper. What's less romantic than staring alone at a blank screen? And edgy? I've changed the cat little because I didn't know what my characters were going to say next.”

“This feeling of being in proximity to something that’s lost to you, it seems like my whole life right now.”

“Life's full of events - they occur and you adjust, you roll and move on. But at some point you realize some events are actually developments. You realize there's a big plan out there you know nothing about, and a development is a first step in that new direction. Sometimes things feel like big-time developmens but in time you adjust, you find a new way and realize they didn't throw you off course, they didn't change you. They were just events. The tricky part is telling the difference between the two.”

“In this way, you’ll live forever.”

“To survive in this world, you got to be many times a coward but at least once a hero”

“Jun Do had dealt with this his whole life, the ways it was impossible for people from normal families to conceive of a man in so much hurt that he couldn’t acknowledge his own son, that there was nothing worse than a mother leaving her children, though it happened all the time, that “take” was a word people used for those who had so little to give as to be immeasurable.”

“I wonder of what you must daily endure in America, having no government to protect you, no one to tell you what to do. Is it true you're given no ration card, that you must find food for yourself? Is it true that you labor for no higher purpose than paper money? What is California, this place you come from? I have never seen a picture. What plays over the American loudspeakers, when is your curfew, what is taught at your child-rearing collectives? Where does a woman go with her children on Sunday afternoons, and if a woman loses her husband, how does she know the government will assign her a good replacement? With whom would she curry favor to ensure her children got the best Youth Troop leader?”