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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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Literature is subservient to nothing but truth.
Gao Xingjian
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When you're telling a story, you've got to give details.
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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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I believe in science but I also believe in fate.
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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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Realty exists only through experience, and it must be personal experience.
Gao Xingjian
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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.
Gao Xingjian
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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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When God talks to humans he doesn't want humans to hear his voice.
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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Only a lunatic would think that art is superior to nature.
Gao Xingjian
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I don't want to be a strong hero who can save society. I just want to save myself.
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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I want to write a novel so profound that it would suffocate a fly.
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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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
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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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There are numerous layers to truth, and the simple and superficial statement of facts cannot satisfy the writer.
Gao Xingjian
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Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.
Gao Xingjian