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Maybe there isn't a God after all, maybe there's only a universe rotating by itself like a millstone.

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
Millstone
Rotating
God
Maybe
Universe
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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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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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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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If you want to do anything, do it now, without compromise or concession, because you have only one life.
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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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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.
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Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.
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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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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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Life is fragile, yet to obstinately struggle is natural.
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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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Literature is subservient to nothing but truth.
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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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There are numerous layers to truth, and the simple and superficial statement of facts cannot satisfy the writer.
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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.
Gao Xingjian
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Only a lunatic would think that art is superior to nature.
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Life is probably a tangle of love and hate permanently knotted together.
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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.
Gao Xingjian