It is a Chinese tradition that everyone has to be in everyone else's life. — Yiyun Li Copy Share Image
What a long way it is from one life to another: yet why write if not for that distance; if things can… — Yiyun Li Copy Share Image
“There is nothing selfish, dazzling, or preposterous about dreamers; in everyday life they blend in rather than stand out, though it's not… — Yiyun Li Copy Share Image
“I have spent much of my life turning away from the scripts given to me, in China and in America; my refusal… — Yiyun Li Copy Share Image
“...she knew that in all stories she must be left out-the life she had made for herself was a life of flight,… — Yiyun Li Copy Share Image
She wonders if this is what people call falling in love, the desire to be with someone for every minute of the… — Yiyun Li Copy Share Image
“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.… — Yiyun Li Copy Share Image
“When the dead departed, they took away any falsehoods that they might have allowed us to believe while alive; we who are… — Yiyun Li Copy Share Image
“The crowdedness of family life and the faithfulness of solitude - both brave decisions, or both decisions of cowardice - make little… — Yiyun Li Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
To write about a struggle amidst the struggling: one must hope that the muddling will end someday. — Yiyun Li Copy Share Image
What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive? — Yiyun Li Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
