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Literature is subservient to nothing but 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
Nothing
Subservient
Literature
Truth

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Only a lunatic would think that art is superior to nature.
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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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Men always look differently at women, even if it's not your intention it is wrongly interpreted as such.
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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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I believe in science but I also believe in fate.
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Life is fragile, yet to obstinately struggle is natural.
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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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There are numerous layers to truth, and the simple and superficial statement of facts cannot satisfy the writer.
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Life is probably a tangle of love and hate permanently knotted together.
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Walk where your heart leads you, there are no restrictions and no burdens.
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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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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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Maybe there isn't a God after all, maybe there's only a universe rotating by itself like a millstone.
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Body odour (known also as scent of the immortals) is a disgusting condition with an awful, nauseating smell.
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I want to write a novel so profound that it would suffocate a fly.
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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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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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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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I don't want to be a strong hero who can save society. I just want to save myself.
Gao Xingjian