Quote

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

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
Never
Would
Fluffy
Cloud
Describe
Chinese
Clouds
English

More quotes by 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
Why do I write about China? That is a very good question. I think there are questions about China that I haven't been able to answer. The reason I write is that there are questions to which I want to find answers - or I want to find questions beyond those questions.
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
Almost all of the stories in The Matchmaker, the Apprentice, and the Football Fan are told in the first person, yet, depending on the angle and distance of the narrator, they exert different effects. The best are those in which the speaker never poses as an objective outsider. (...) Other stories are damaged by the urge to distance the narrator.
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
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
What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?
Yiyun Li
Image
Chinese people don't care about freedom, but they do care about justice.
Yiyun Li
Image
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.
Yiyun Li
Image
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.
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
A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.
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
Image
There are people who are willing to work within the system, and people who don't want to work with the system at all.
Yiyun Li
Image
Some people in China don't look at freedom of speech as an abstract ideal, but more as a means to an end.
Yiyun Li
Image
Horrible that you could write in a language so well, but have nothing meaningful to say.
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 our eyes are trained to look for what we want to see.
Yiyun Li
Image
Every place is a good place, only time goes wrong.
Yiyun Li
Image
To write about a struggle amidst the struggling: one must hope that the muddling will end someday.
Yiyun Li