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For me, writing [was] a question of survival...I could not trust anyone, even my family. The atmosphere was so poisoned. People even in your own family could turn you in.

Gao Xingjian

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Gao Xingjian
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: January 4
Film Director
Literary Critic
Novelist
Painter
Playwright
Translator
Writer
Xingjian Gao
Hành Kiện Cao
Hsing-chien Kao
Writing
Atmosphere
Even
Survival
People
Trust
Question
Turn
Anyone
Turns
Family
Poisoned

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Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.
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Reality is myself, reality is only the perception of this instant and it can't be related to another person.
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When you're telling a story, you've got to give details.
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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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There are numerous layers to truth, and the simple and superficial statement of facts cannot satisfy the writer.
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Literature is subservient to nothing but truth.
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When God talks to humans he doesn't want humans to hear his voice.
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Everybody can write poetry, just like everybody knows how to make love.
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Walk where your heart leads you, there are no restrictions and no burdens.
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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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Everyone has to have either this or that problem, if he can't find any problem, he loses all reason for living.
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The human need for language is not simply for the transmission of meaning, it is at the same time listening to and affirming a person's existence.
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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.
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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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You should know that there is little you can seek in this world, that there is no need for you to be so greedy, in the end all you can achieve are memories, hazy, intangible, dreamlike memories which are impossible to articulate. When you try to relate them, there are only sentences, the dregs left from the filter of linguistic structures.
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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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Man tends to think that he is a creator, that he is like God. This is especially true of intellectuals, and in the last century, intellectuals tended to forget that they were like everyone else. Writing this book was a description of man going from a state of God back to a state of man, back to being a normal person.
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Once the buttons are undone, you know how it'll all end. It's all in the game, there are no miracles.
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Men always look differently at women, even if it's not your intention it is wrongly interpreted as such.
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