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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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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
Found
True
Truth
Life
Mask
Fiction
Literature
Tell

More quotes by Gao Xingjian

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Only a lunatic would think that art is superior to nature.
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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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Men always look differently at women, even if it's not your intention it is wrongly interpreted as such.
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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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I don't want to be a strong hero who can save society. I just want to save myself.
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Soul Mountain, the story of one man’s quest for inner peace and freedom.
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Everybody can write poetry, just like everybody knows how to make love.
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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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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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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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When God talks to humans he doesn't want humans to hear his voice.
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Walk where your heart leads you, there are no restrictions and no burdens.
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.
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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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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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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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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
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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