Yuxiang Wei

“To identify and isolate his perceived political enemies, Kim Il Sung created a neofeudal, blood-based pecking order in 1957. The government classified and, to a considerable extent, segregated the entire North Korean population based on the perceived reliability of an individual’s parents and grandparents. North Korea called itself the Worker’s Paradise, but even as it professed allegiance to communist ideals of equality, it invented one of the world’s most rigidly stratified caste systems.”
― Blaine Harden, Escape From Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

“They talked to him in his own intellectual terms, sometimes caustically sarcastic, sometimes crushingly critical, always humorous. In personal terms, however, they treated him with a gentle consideration which was almost loving.”
― Jane Hawking, Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen

“The contrast between the restrictions placed on him by his shrunken frame and his croaking speech on the one hand, and the power of his mind which allowed him to roam the outer reaches of the universe on the other, provided a fertile source for many imaginative flights of fanciful prose. Moreover”
― Jane Hawking, Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen

“Whatever they may have felt about the risks of such a step, I was beginning to feel confident that Stephen would survive. How could he not survive with so many people contributing in every imaginable way to his recovery? Some”
― Jane Hawking, Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen