Quote

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

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
Needs
Simply
Time
Existence
Language
Persons
Person
Transmission
Human
Affirming
Humans
Meaning
Need
Listening

More quotes by Gao Xingjian

Image
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
Image
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
Image
They say it only takes an instant to have a dream a dream can be compressed into hardtack.
Gao Xingjian
Image
Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.
Gao Xingjian
Image
I want to write a novel so profound that it would suffocate a fly.
Gao Xingjian
Image
Only a lunatic would think that art is superior to nature.
Gao Xingjian
Image
Body odour (known also as scent of the immortals) is a disgusting condition with an awful, nauseating smell.
Gao Xingjian
Image
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
Image
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
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
Soul Mountain, the story of one man’s quest for inner peace and freedom.
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
Walk where your heart leads you, there are no restrictions and no burdens.
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
When God talks to humans he doesn't want humans to hear his voice.
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
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
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
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
Realty exists only through experience, and it must be personal experience.
Gao Xingjian