But loneliness is as delusive a belief in the pertinence…

“I am not and autobiographical writer--one can't be without a solid and explicable self--and read all autobiographical writers with the same curiosity. What kind…

— Yiyun Li

One easy mistake to make with the first novel is to expand the short story. Some things are better as a story; you cannot…

— Yiyun Li

“sometimes Moran wondered if her chief merit was her willingness to serve as a human receptacle for details. Sympathy and admiration and surprise she…

— Yiyun Li

I always tell my students to go back after a hundred pages and rewrite from the beginning. It's really harder if you've already finished…

— Yiyun Li

She wonders if this is what people call falling in love, the desire to be with someone for every minute of the rest of…

— Yiyun Li

Some people in China don't look at freedom of speech as an abstract ideal, but more as a means to an end.

— Yiyun Li

I would never describe a cloud as 'fluffy'—in Chinese or in English.

— Yiyun Li

“It saddened her that Luo insisted on holding on to her as if they had started to share some vital organs during their twenty…

— Yiyun Li

To write about a struggle amidst the struggling: one must hope that the muddling will end someday.

— Yiyun Li

I think our eyes are trained to look for what we want to see.

— Yiyun Li

What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?

— Yiyun Li

“His mother had always been a headstrong woman, and with her grayish-white mane and unsmiling face, she appeared as regal and intimidating as she…

— Yiyun Li

In China, your freedom is always limited, but this limitation applies to almost everyone. If someone does injustice to you, though, you have to…

— Yiyun Li

The boy will remain a son and never become a father. He will be forgotten by the crowd once his blood is rinsed clean…

— Yiyun Li

You can write about a country without taking a stand, but you cannot write about a country without noting that there's history, and that…

— Yiyun Li