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I would never describe a cloud as 'fluffy'—in Chinese or in English.

Yiyun Li

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Yiyun Li
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: November 4
Journalist
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Peking
Cloud
Describe
Chinese
Clouds
English
Never
Would
Fluffy

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In film, you have to present everything on the screen so it's the opposite of what I usually do with storytelling. It forced me to think about how people walk, where they sit at that moment. With Princess of Nebraska, it was just fun to watch because the movie was so far from the story. It was very much a different story.
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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.
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What a long way it is from one life to another: yet why write if not for that distance if things can be let go, every before replaced by an after.
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Some people in China don't look at freedom of speech as an abstract ideal, but more as a means to an end.
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Chinese people don't care about freedom, but they do care about justice.
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Horrible that you could write in a language so well, but have nothing meaningful to say.
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Mrs. Pang was once a nanny for me, and she spoils me the way I imagined kindhearted women would spoil an orphan, loving me for whom I am, exactly the opposite of my mother, whose love I have to earn with great effort and with little success.
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A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.
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To write about a struggle amidst the struggling: one must hope that the muddling will end someday.
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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.
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Every place is a good place, only time goes wrong.
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Only the smaller fish pay for the goverment's face-lift. The big ones - they just become bigger and fatter.
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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.
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Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.
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What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?
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Everybody contributes something to the system, and everybody suffers from the system.
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There is a certain amount of politeness here in America, which is probably more than just politeness.
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Overall there may be less censorship in America than in China, but censorship and self-censorship are not only from political pressure, but also pressures from other places in a society.
Yiyun Li
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She wonders if this is what people call falling in love, the desire to be with someone for every minute of the rest of her life so strong that sometimes she is frightened of herself.
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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