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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

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Yiyun Li
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: November 4
Journalist
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Peking
Hero
Heroine
Grew
Heroines
Call
Regarding
Learn
Heroism
Culture
Villain
Someone
Heroes
Way
Time
Calling

More quotes by Yiyun Li

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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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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.
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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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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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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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Only the smaller fish pay for the goverment's face-lift. The big ones - they just become bigger and fatter.
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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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Horrible that you could write in a language so well, but have nothing meaningful to say.
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A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.
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I would never describe a cloud as 'fluffy'—in Chinese or in English.
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What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?
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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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It is a Chinese tradition that everyone has to be in everyone else's life.
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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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Every place is a good place, only time goes wrong.
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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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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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Everybody contributes something to the system, and everybody suffers from the system.
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