Quote

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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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
Little
Lying
Aim
Wells
Values
Basic
Human
Fact
Lies
Humans
Facts
Value
Unassailable
Well
Thought
Seem
Subvert
Writing
Truth
Quality
Revealing
Would
Seems
Literature
Discovering
World
Littles
Known
Rarely

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I want to write a novel so profound that it would suffocate a fly.
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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.
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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?
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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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Only a lunatic would think that art is superior to nature.
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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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When God talks to humans he doesn't want humans to hear his voice.
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Realty exists only through experience, and it must be personal experience.
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When you're telling a story, you've got to give details.
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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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Men always look differently at women, even if it's not your intention it is wrongly interpreted as such.
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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.
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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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Reality is myself, reality is only the perception of this instant and it can't be related to another person.
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Soul Mountain, the story of one man’s quest for inner peace and freedom.
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Walk where your heart leads you, there are no restrictions and no burdens.
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Maybe there isn't a God after all, maybe there's only a universe rotating by itself like a millstone.
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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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If you want to do anything, do it now, without compromise or concession, because you have only one life.
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Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.
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