Every Falling Star Quotes

“I think, when we stop dreaming, we're just as good as dead.”
― Sungju Lee, Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea

“It took only a few days for Eodaejin Market to echo with fictionalized stories of our triumphs, including training sessions that involved our slaying wild boar with our bare hands and hurling nunchaku with such precision we could skin the fur off a bear. I’d laugh when I’d hear these stories but then wonder after: Was this how Kim Il-sung’s childhood snowballed into such an epic? Myeongchul’s words came back to me: Folklore has a funny way of becoming truth.”
― Sungju Lee, Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea

“Home is not a place, but people.”
― Sungju Lee, Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea

“And maybe the best oppressors know to take away our physical security, then our connection to loved ones, then hope, then dreams...”
― Sungju Lee, Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea

“Folklore has a funny way of becoming truth.”
― Sungju Lee, Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea

“Dreams are one thing the government can't take from us.”
― Sungju Lee, Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea

“We were alone now. Our loved ones left, taking a big hole out of us with them when they departed.”
― Sungju Lee, Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea

“The moral of the story is that good deeds lay a foundation for a house of great wealth and luck. Greed and ego, however, lay a foundation of destruction. The house that is built on such a foundation, one day, no matter what, will be torn down.”
― Sungju Lee, Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea

“I think the worst thing anyone can do to another human being isn’t take away their home, their job, their parents. I think the worst thing anyone can do is make them stop believing in something higher, something good, something pure, a reason for everything—hope, maybe. God, maybe.”
― Sungju Lee, Every Falling Star: The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea