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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
Subservient
Literature
Truth
Nothing

More quotes by 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.
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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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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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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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If you want to do anything, do it now, without compromise or concession, because you have only one life.
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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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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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Men always look differently at women, even if it's not your intention it is wrongly interpreted as such.
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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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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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Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.
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I don't want to be a strong hero who can save society. I just want to save myself.
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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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I want to write a novel so profound that it would suffocate a fly.
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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.
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When God talks to humans he doesn't want humans to hear his voice.
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Life is probably a tangle of love and hate permanently knotted together.
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Realty exists only through experience, and it must be personal experience.
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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