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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.

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
Even
Behinds
Rousing
Time
Behind
Nausea
Already
Weariness
Views
Bitterness
Sort
Passed
Literature
Revolutionary
Death
Revolution
Left
View
Listlessness

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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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I want to write a novel so profound that it would suffocate a fly.
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Walk where your heart leads you, there are no restrictions and no burdens.
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When God talks to humans he doesn't want humans to hear his voice.
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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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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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There are numerous layers to truth, and the simple and superficial statement of facts cannot satisfy the writer.
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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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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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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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Only a lunatic would think that art is superior to nature.
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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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If you want to do anything, do it now, without compromise or concession, because you have only one life.
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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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Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.
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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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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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Life is probably a tangle of love and hate permanently knotted together.
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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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