“The only lesson I got pounded into me was about man's limitless capacity for vice - that and the fact that social distinctions vanish in a concentration camp. I once believed that man was different from other animals, but Yodok showed me that reality doesn't support this opinion.”

“People who are hungry don't have the heart to think about others. Sometimes they can't even care for their own family. Hunger quashes man's will to help his fellow man. I've seen fathers steal food from their own children's lunchboxes. As they scarf down the corn they have only one overpowering desire: to placate, if even for just one moment, that feeling of insufferable need.”

“We left in the same kind of truck that had brought us to the camp ten years earlier. When it started up, I was taken back to our departure from Pyongyang, and to my mother's tear-lined face as it receded into the distance. The vision struck me with new and unexpected force - for I had all but forgotten my mother.”

“I felt like a frog that had just come out of its pit, from which it had contemplated the circle of sky outlined by the rim, and taken it for the whole of the world. I had passed through to the other side of the mirror. (162)”

“A man has as many social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion he cares. He generally shows a different side of himself to each of these different groups.”

“Nenek moyang kami mengembangkan konsep tata cara makan, sebagai tanda khusus perilaku manusia beradab”

“Jika penjara adalah ajang darmawisata, semua orang pasti ingin ke sini. Sedikit lapar dan derita akan mengajarkanmu siapa pemimpinnya”