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Only a lunatic would think that art is superior to nature.

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
Lunatic
Superior
Superiors
Art
Nature
Would
Think
Thinking

More quotes by Gao Xingjian

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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.
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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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They say it only takes an instant to have a dream a dream can be compressed into hardtack.
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When you're telling a story, you've got to give details.
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Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.
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Everybody can write poetry, just like everybody knows how to make love.
Gao Xingjian
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In my view the time for rousing revolutionary literature has passed, because the revolution has already revolutionised itself to death and has left behind only bitterness and a sort of weariness, listlessness and even nausea.
Gao Xingjian
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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.
Gao Xingjian
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Realty exists only through experience, and it must be personal experience.
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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.
Gao Xingjian
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Reality is myself, reality is only the perception of this instant and it can't be related to another person.
Gao Xingjian
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The enterprise of describing something in language that has never been described before is a very difficult thing to do. When you decide to do away with old cliches or old phraseologies, and to come up with a new way of saying something, it's extremely difficult.
Gao Xingjian
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Life is fragile, yet to obstinately struggle is natural.
Gao Xingjian
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Body odour (known also as scent of the immortals) is a disgusting condition with an awful, nauseating smell.
Gao Xingjian
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Literature is subservient to nothing but truth.
Gao Xingjian
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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.
Gao Xingjian
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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.
Gao Xingjian
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There are numerous layers to truth, and the simple and superficial statement of facts cannot satisfy the writer.
Gao Xingjian
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Walk where your heart leads you, there are no restrictions and no burdens.
Gao Xingjian
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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.
Gao Xingjian