Yiyun Li

“I have spent much of my life turning away from the scripts given to me, in China and in America; my refusal…

— Yiyun Li

“I am aware that, every time I have a conversation with a book, I benefit from someone's decision against silence.”

— Yiyun Li

Regarding heroism, I grew up in a culture where you learn about heroes and heroines all the time. In a way, when…

— Yiyun Li

“Never would I have a more memorable time than the month I spent in the mountains, though I wonder, when I say…

— Yiyun Li

What a long way it is from one life to another: yet why write if not for that distance; if things can…

— Yiyun Li

There are people who are willing to work within the system, and people who don't want to work with the system at…

— Yiyun Li

Only the smaller fish pay for the goverment's face-lift. The big ones - they just become bigger and fatter.

— Yiyun Li

“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

Mrs. Pang was once a nanny for me, and she spoils me the way I imagined kindhearted women would spoil an orphan,…

— Yiyun Li

Your characters are always your children. And while you are writing, you're keeping them safe. Now they're ready to go into the…

— Yiyun Li

“To say we know a person is to write that person off.”

— Yiyun Li

Chinese people don't care about freedom, but they do care about justice.

— Yiyun Li

Horrible that you could write in a language so well, but have nothing meaningful to say.

— Yiyun Li

“...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

Almost all of the stories in The Matchmaker, the Apprentice, and the Football Fan are told in the first person, yet, depending…

— Yiyun Li

It is a Chinese tradition that everyone has to be in everyone else's life.

— Yiyun Li

Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.

— Yiyun Li

“When we feel haunted, it is the pull of our own home we're experiencing, but a more upsetting possibility is that the…

— Yiyun Li

Why do I write about China? That is a very good question. I think there are questions about China that I haven't…

— Yiyun Li

“Much of what one does--to avoid suffering, to seek happiness, to stay healthy--is to keep a safe space for one's private language.”

— Yiyun Li

Everybody contributes something to the system, and everybody suffers from the system.

— Yiyun Li

In film, you have to present everything on the screen so it's the opposite of what I usually do with storytelling. It…

— Yiyun Li

“They were lonely and sad people, all three of them, and they would not make one another less sad, but they could,…

— Yiyun Li

“She felt the dampness of her palms and wiped them on the back of her black cotton skirt.”

— Yiyun Li

But loneliness is as delusive a belief in the pertinence of the world as is love: in choosing to feel lonely, as…

— Yiyun Li