“I screamed until my voice dried up in my throat. We all did. All of us in Ward Six, all of us forgotten, left to rot.”

“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.”

“Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; theyknow all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence.”

“I remembered screaming then, screaming until my voice stopped.”

“We are all on the stairs, my friend; some of us are going down, some us are going up!”

“We are flawed creatures, all of us. Some of us think that means we should fix our flaws. But get rid of my flaws and there would be no one left.”