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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.

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
Would
Reading
Cremated
Whether
Originally
Less
Intended
Read
Hadn
Stills
Difference
Still
Wouldn
Book
Differences
Make
Waiting

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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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Life is probably a tangle of love and hate permanently knotted together.
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Life is fragile, yet to obstinately struggle is natural.
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Walk where your heart leads you, there are no restrictions and no burdens.
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The enterprise of describing something in language that has never been described before is a very difficult thing to do. When you decide to do away with old cliches or old phraseologies, and to come up with a new way of saying something, it's extremely difficult.
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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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Only a lunatic would think that art is superior to nature.
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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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When you're telling a story, you've got to give details.
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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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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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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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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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I believe in science but I also believe in fate.
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When God talks to humans he doesn't want humans to hear his voice.
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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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Body odour (known also as scent of the immortals) is a disgusting condition with an awful, nauseating smell.
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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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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 don't want to be a strong hero who can save society. I just want to save myself.
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