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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
English
Never
Would
Fluffy
Cloud
Describe
Chinese
Clouds

More quotes by Yiyun Li

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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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Only the smaller fish pay for the goverment's face-lift. The big ones - they just become bigger and fatter.
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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.
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Everybody contributes something to the system, and everybody suffers from the system.
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If I didn't self-censor, I would be in jail, and then I wouldn't be effective at all.
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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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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.
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I think our eyes are trained to look for what we want to see.
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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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A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There are people who are willing to work within the system, and people who don't want to work with the system at all.
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Every place is a good place, only time goes wrong.
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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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Horrible that you could write in a language so well, but have nothing meaningful to say.
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Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.
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Chinese people don't care about freedom, but they do care about justice.
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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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