Gao Xingjian Quotes

Quotes about:

• Dreams are more real than reality itself, they're closer to the self.

  Gao Xingjian

  Dream, Real, Self

  55 Copy quote

• Walk where your heart leads you, there are no restrictions and no burdens.

  Gao Xingjian

  Freedom, Heart, Burden

  20 Copy quote

• If you want to do anything, do it now, without compromise or concession, because you have only one life.

  Gao Xingjian

  Want, Compromise, Concessions

  "Living without 'isms'" by Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. August 1, 2008.

  19 Copy quote

• Loneliness is a prerequisite for freedom. Freedom depends on the ability to reflect, and reflection can only begin when one is alone.

  Gao Xingjian

  Loneliness, Reflection, Ability

  21 Copy quote

• 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

  True Life, Fiction, Literature

  "Living without 'isms'". Interview with Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. August 1, 2008.

  15 Copy quote

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

  Gao Xingjian

  Writing, Suffering, Ease

  22 Copy quote

• The human species does not necessarily move in stages from progress to progress ... history and civilization do not advance in tandem. From the stagnation of Medieval Europe to the decline and chaos in recent times on the mainland of Asia and to the catastrophes of two world wars in the twentieth century, the methods of killing people became increasingly sophisticated. Scientific and technological progress certainly does not imply that humankind as a result becomes more civilized.

  Gao Xingjian

  War, Moving, Europe

  15 Copy quote

• 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.

  Gao Xingjian

  Distance, Symbolism, White

  "Soul Mountain". Book by Gao Xingjian, 1989.

  13 Copy quote

• If everyone is a hero, then disasters and atrocities lose their meaning. It's only when certain people are heroes and others are not that these tragedies and disasters that mankind faces take on meaning.

  Gao Xingjian

  Hero, People, Tragedy

  5 Copy quote

• Life is fragile, yet to obstinately struggle is natural.

  Gao Xingjian

  Struggle, Life Is, Natural

  "Soul Mountain". Book by Gao Xingjian, 1990.

  6 Copy quote

• You're safe only when you can't see anybody.

  Gao Xingjian

  Safe

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Gao Xingjian

  Essentials

  "Soul Mountain". Book by Gao Xingjian, 1990.

  6 Copy quote

• I don't want to be a strong hero who can save society. I just want to save myself.

  Gao Xingjian

  Strong, Hero, Want

  "Living without 'isms'". Interview with Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. August 1, 2008.

  12 Copy quote

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

  Gao Xingjian

  Yield, Literature, Starting

  20 Copy quote

• Everybody can write poetry, just like everybody knows how to make love.

  Gao Xingjian

  Writing, Poetry, Making Love

  5 Copy quote

• You contemplate and you wander without any worries, between heaven and earth, in your own private world, and in this way you acquire supreme freedom.

  Gao Xingjian

  Worry, Heaven, World

  8 Copy quote

• Truth refuses to be subservient to either politics or the market.

  Gao Xingjian

  Truth, Refuse, Subservient

  5 Copy quote

• With the beginning of life, comes the thirst for truth, whereas the ability to lie is gradually acquired in the process of trying to stay alive.

  Gao Xingjian

  Lying, Trying, Alive

  5 Copy quote

• 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?

  Gao Xingjian

  Writing, Self, Literature

  17 Copy quote

• To subvert is not the aim of literature, its value lies in discovering and revealing what is rarely known, little known, thought to be known but in fact not very well known of the truth of the human world. It would seem that truth is the unassailable and most basic quality of literature.

  Gao Xingjian

  Lying, Writing, Quality

  15 Copy quote

• Since it was announced that I had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has condemned my works and criticized them harshly. All of my works are now banned from getting into China or being published in China. What author would want to return to a country that banned his or her books?

  Gao Xingjian

  Country, Book, Chinese

  10 Copy quote

• Love is so holy, so confusing. It makes a man anxious, tormented. Love, how can I define it?

  Gao Xingjian

  Love, Men, Confusing

  13 Copy quote

• Language is inherently not concerned with logic. As an expression of the psychological activities of humankind, it simply follows a linear process as it seeks actualisation. Moreover, it does not obey the objective concepts of time and space that belong to the physical world. When the discussion of time and space is imported into linguistic art from scientific aims and research methods, that linguistic art is entirely reduced to trifling pseudo-philosophical issues.

  Gao Xingjian

  Art, Philosophical, Issues

  4 Copy quote

• Life is probably a tangle of love and hate permanently knotted together.

  Gao Xingjian

  Hate, Love And Hate, Together

  Gao Xingjian (2000). “Soul Mountain”

  7 Copy quote

• A good work can be communicated across languages ... [provided one does not] fall into the trap of narrow-minded nationalistic or chauvinistic thinking.

  Gao Xingjian

  Fall, Thinking, Doe

  10 Copy quote

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