Gao Xingjian Quotes
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Realty exists only through experience, and it must be personal experience.
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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.
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Love is so holy, so confusing. It makes a man anxious, tormented. Love, how can I define it?
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They say it only takes an instant to have a dream; a dream can be compressed into hardtack.
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I don't want to be a strong hero who can save society. I just want to save myself.
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In the history of literature there are many great enduring works which were not published in the lifetimes of the authors. If the authors had not achieved self-affirmation while writing, how could they have continued to write?
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Experience has taught me that any kind of political grouping is oppressive. It's the blind mass that crushes the individual.
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The creature known as man is of course highly intelligent, he's capable of manufacturing almost anything from rumours to test-tube babies and yet he destroys two to three species every day. This is the absurdity of man.
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Grandfather, when you saw the tiger were you scared? Bad people scare me, not tigers. Grandfather, have you ever run into bad people? There aren’t many tigers but lots of bad people, only you can’t shoot people.
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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.
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The sand murmurs that it wants to swallow everything.
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Indeed, loft aspirations produce ideas.
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As a male writer, women are always what men pursue, and their world is always a mystery. So I always tried to present as many views as possible on women's worlds.
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If you want to do anything, do it now, without compromise or concession, because you have only one life.
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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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Not knowing what one is looking for is pure agony. Too much analytical thinking, too much logic, too many meanings! Life has no logic, so why does there have to be logic to explain what it means? Also, what is logic? I think I may need to break away from analytical thinking; this is the cause of all my anxieties.
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What is essential is whether it is perceived and not whether it exists. To exist and yet not to be perceived is the same as not exist.
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Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.
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In the snow outside my window I see a small green frog, one eye blinking and the other wide open, unmoving, looking at me . I know this is God.
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I want to write a novel so profound that it would suffocate a fly.
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She says she doesn’t know what to do! But he says coldly that he knows what he wants to do, but he can’t.
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Some distance away is a white azalea bush which stuns me with its stately beauty.____ This is pristine natural beauty. it is irrepressible, seeks no reward, and is without goal, a beauty derived neither from symbolism nor metaphor and needing neither analogies nor associations.
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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 read or not wouldn't make a difference, I would still be waiting to get cremated.
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A good man never fights with a woman.