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

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
Anything
Without
Life
Concession
Concessions
Compromise

More quotes by Gao Xingjian

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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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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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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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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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Only a lunatic would think that art is superior to nature.
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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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When God talks to humans he doesn't want humans to hear his voice.
Gao Xingjian
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When you're telling a story, you've got to give details.
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Literature is subservient to nothing but truth.
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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.
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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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Soul Mountain, the story of one man’s quest for inner peace and freedom.
Gao Xingjian
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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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I believe in science but I also believe in fate.
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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Men always look differently at women, even if it's not your intention it is wrongly interpreted as such.
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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.
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.
Gao Xingjian
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Everybody can write poetry, just like everybody knows how to make love.
Gao Xingjian