Quote

To write about a struggle amidst the struggling: one must hope that the muddling will end someday.

Yiyun Li

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Yiyun Li
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: November 4
Journalist
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Peking
Struggle
Hope
Write
Ends
Must
Muddling
Writing
Amidst
Struggling
Someday

More quotes by Yiyun Li

Image
You can write about a country without taking a stand, but you cannot write about a country without noting that there's history, and that there's politics going on. To me, that's the same if you write about America. You don't have to write about politics, but the politics have to be present in the characters.
Yiyun Li
Image
Everybody contributes something to the system, and everybody suffers from the system.
Yiyun Li
Image
If I didn't self-censor, I would be in jail, and then I wouldn't be effective at all.
Yiyun Li
Image
One easy mistake to make with the first novel is to expand the short story. Some things are better as a story you cannot dilute things into a novel. I think the first hundred pages of a novel are very important. That's where you set things up: the world, the characters. Once you've set that up, it'll be much easier.
Yiyun Li
Image
There is a certain amount of politeness here in America, which is probably more than just politeness.
Yiyun Li
Image
Your characters are always your children. And while you are writing, you're keeping them safe. Now they're ready to go into the world and it's sad. I'm happy with the way the novel came out but all the characters' ending really saddened me.
Yiyun Li
Image
A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.
Yiyun Li
Image
But loneliness is as delusive a belief in the pertinence of the world as is love: in choosing to feel lonely, as in choosing to love, one carves a space next to oneself to be filled by others - a friend, a lover, a toy poodle, a violinist on the radio.
Yiyun Li
Image
I always tell my students to go back after a hundred pages and rewrite from the beginning. It's really harder if you've already finished four hundred pages and realize the first hundred aren't working.
Yiyun Li
Image
I think the isolation in China also has to do with people's memories being wiped out, collective memories as well as individual memories, by the fact that the recent history has been constantly rewritten and revised.
Yiyun Li
Image
Every place is a good place, only time goes wrong.
Yiyun Li
Image
I think our eyes are trained to look for what we want to see.
Yiyun Li
Image
I would never describe a cloud as 'fluffy'—in Chinese or in English.
Yiyun Li
Image
Only the smaller fish pay for the goverment's face-lift. The big ones - they just become bigger and fatter.
Yiyun Li
Image
Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.
Yiyun Li
Image
No one is immune from either taking the wrong action or not taking action at all, but the sense that something is completely out of a person's control is stronger in China.
Yiyun Li
Image
Horrible that you could write in a language so well, but have nothing meaningful to say.
Yiyun Li
Image
The decaying that had dragged on for too long had only turned tragedy into nuisance death, when it strikes, better completes its annihilating act on the first try.
Yiyun Li
Image
The boy will remain a son and never become a father. He will be forgotten by the crowd once his blood is rinsed clean from the ground his sister will think of him but soon she will forget him, too. He will live on only in Han's memory, a child punished not for his own insincerity but someone else's disbelief.
Yiyun Li
Image
Regarding heroism, I grew up in a culture where you learn about heroes and heroines all the time. In a way, when you call someone a hero or heroine, it's the same as calling them a villain.
Yiyun Li