Mo Yan Quotes

27 quotes in 436 categories

• People who are strangers to liquor are incapable of talking about literature.
• A writer writes what he knows, in ways that are natural to him.
• Where there's life, death is inevitable. Dying's easy; it's living that's hard. The harder it gets, the stronger the will to live. And the greater…
• The act of giving voice to this spiritual suffering is, in my view, the sacred duty of the writer.
• A writer should always bravely face life, risking death and mutilation in order to dethrone an emperor.
• The sun, a red wheel, was sinking slowly in the west. Besides being spectacularly beautiful, the early-summer sunset was exceedingly soft and gentle: black mulberry…
• All kinds of mysterious phenomena exist in this world, but answers to most of them have come with advances in scientific knowledge. Love is the…
• Some may want to shout on the street, but we should tolerate those who hide in their rooms and use literature to voice their opinions.
• I think writers write for their consciences, they write for their own true audiences, for their souls.
• A writer should bury his thoughts deep and convey them through the characters in his novel.
• A sudden cloud formation of birds was swallowed up by the moon, and he was just as suddenly penned in by four walls-the demons' pen.
• For a country boy, poor as I was, whose constant worry was to be able to have enough to eat, the Army guaranteed one's survival.
• I have always been independent.
• I know what real courage is, and I understand true compassion.
• I think that China has many outstanding authors, and their great works should also be recognised by the world.
• I write about my region, the countryside in which I grew up.
• Loneliness and hunger were my fortunes of creation.
• No person writes to win awards.
• One of the biggest problems in literature is the lack of subtlety.
• Possibly because I've lived so much of my life in difficult circumstances, I think I have a more profound understanding of life.

Browse Mo Yan Quotes by Category