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Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.

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
Starting
Literature
Clear
Yields
Point
Observing
Humans
Minded
Yield
Observation
Oneself

More quotes by 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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Maybe there isn't a God after all, maybe there's only a universe rotating by itself like a millstone.
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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When you're telling a story, you've got to give details.
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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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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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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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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There are numerous layers to truth, and the simple and superficial statement of facts cannot satisfy the writer.
Gao Xingjian
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Everybody can write poetry, just like everybody knows how to make love.
Gao Xingjian
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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.
Gao Xingjian
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I believe in science but I also believe in fate.
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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Soul Mountain, the story of one man’s quest for inner peace and freedom.
Gao Xingjian
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Life is fragile, yet to obstinately struggle is natural.
Gao Xingjian
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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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Realty exists only through experience, and it must be personal experience.
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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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