Writer Quotes by Gao Xingjian

12 Writer quotes by Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian’s philosophical bent shows up in these twelve brief statements, offering a modest but thoughtful window into his ideas about the writer’s path.

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When you use words, you're able to keep your mind alive. Writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.

Gao Xingjian

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Writing eases my suffering . . . writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.

Gao Xingjian

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It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.

Gao Xingjian

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A writer has to fully defend his rights and his own worth.

Gao Xingjian

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“Reading this chapter is optional but as you’ve read it you’ve read it.”

Gao Xingjian

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Literature is higher than politics, if not actually above politics.

Gao Xingjian

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Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.

Gao Xingjian

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Literature transcends national boundaries, racial boundaries. It goes deep into the issues that concern all human beings. That is why, when people…

Gao Xingjian

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If, while observing the boundless universe, the writer is able to scrutinise his own self as well as others, the resulting incisiveness…

Gao Xingjian

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Literature hasn't come up with any new themes. The literature of all different times - it's still dealing with how one resolves…

Gao Xingjian

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I hadn't originally intended to do any reading, what if I did read one book more or one book less, whether I…

Gao Xingjian

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Literature remains an indispensable human activity, in which the reader and the writer are engaged of their own volition. Hence, literature has…

Gao Xingjian

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If you're not perfectly conscious of yourself, that self can be tyrannical; in relationship to others, anyone can become a tyrant. That's why no…

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Since childhood, I'd dreamed of making a film, but producers in France and Germany wanted to make commercial films with chinoiserie. I refused.

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Literature hasn't come up with any new themes. The literature of all different times - it's still dealing with how one resolves issues of…

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“Yours is much worse than Eastern! You’ve slapped together travel notes, moralistic ramblings, feelings, notes, jottings, untheoretical discussions, unfable-like fables, copied out some folk…

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The enterprise of describing something in language that has never been described before is a very difficult thing to do. When you decide to…

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When I completed writing 'Soul Mountain,' I more or less closed the accounts with China for myself. I was 50 years old when I…

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I want to write a novel so profound that it would suffocate a fly.

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Body odour (known also as scent of the immortals) is a disgusting condition with an awful, nauseating smell.

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If, while observing the boundless universe, the writer is able to scrutinise his own self as well as others, the resulting incisiveness of his…

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When God talks to humans he doesn't want humans to hear his voice.

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“At the height of the Cultural Revolution, rather than risk having to face dire consequences for his accumulated writings, he burned several kilos of…

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Language is inherently not concerned with logic. As an expression of the psychological activities of humankind, it simply follows a linear process as it…

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