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

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

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Life is probably a tangle of love and hate permanently knotted together.
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Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.
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I want to write a novel so profound that it would suffocate a fly.
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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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Soul Mountain, the story of one man’s quest for inner peace and freedom.
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There are numerous layers to truth, and the simple and superficial statement of facts cannot satisfy the writer.
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Literature is subservient to nothing but truth.
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When you're telling a story, you've got to give details.
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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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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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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.
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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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It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.
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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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Everybody can write poetry, just like everybody knows how to make love.
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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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