Quote

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

Gao Xingjian

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Life
Concession
Concessions
Compromise
Anything
Without

More quotes by Gao Xingjian

Image
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.
Gao Xingjian
Image
Body odour (known also as scent of the immortals) is a disgusting condition with an awful, nauseating smell.
Gao Xingjian
Image
Once the buttons are undone, you know how it'll all end. It's all in the game, there are no miracles.
Gao Xingjian
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Life is probably a tangle of love and hate permanently knotted together.
Gao Xingjian
Image
Realty exists only through experience, and it must be personal experience.
Gao Xingjian
Image
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
Image
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
Image
When you're telling a story, you've got to give details.
Gao Xingjian
Image
Everybody can write poetry, just like everybody knows how to make love.
Gao Xingjian
Image
They say it only takes an instant to have a dream a dream can be compressed into hardtack.
Gao Xingjian
Image
I believe in science but I also believe in fate.
Gao Xingjian
Image
Everyone has to have either this or that problem, if he can't find any problem, he loses all reason for living.
Gao Xingjian
Image
Men always look differently at women, even if it's not your intention it is wrongly interpreted as such.
Gao Xingjian
Image
There are numerous layers to truth, and the simple and superficial statement of facts cannot satisfy the writer.
Gao Xingjian
Image
I don't want to be a strong hero who can save society. I just want to save myself.
Gao Xingjian
Image
Soul Mountain, the story of one man’s quest for inner peace and freedom.
Gao Xingjian
Image
Walk where your heart leads you, there are no restrictions and no burdens.
Gao Xingjian
Image
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