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Chinese people don't care about freedom, but they do care about justice.

Yiyun Li

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Yiyun Li
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: November 4
Journalist
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Peking
People
Chinese
Justice
Freedom
Care

More quotes by Yiyun Li

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Horrible that you could write in a language so well, but have nothing meaningful to say.
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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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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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I think our eyes are trained to look for what we want to see.
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What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?
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I would never describe a cloud as 'fluffy'—in Chinese or in English.
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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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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
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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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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
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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.
Yiyun Li
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Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.
Yiyun Li
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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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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
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Everybody contributes something to the system, and everybody suffers from the system.
Yiyun Li
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It is a Chinese tradition that everyone has to be in everyone else's life.
Yiyun Li
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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
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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.
Yiyun Li
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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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Only the smaller fish pay for the goverment's face-lift. The big ones - they just become bigger and fatter.
Yiyun Li