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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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Yiyun Li
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: November 4
Journalist
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Peking
Speech
Freedom
Means
Look
Mean
People
Ideal
Abstract
China

More quotes by Yiyun Li

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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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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.
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I would never describe a cloud as 'fluffy'—in Chinese or in English.
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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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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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There is a certain amount of politeness here in America, which is probably more than just politeness.
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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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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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Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.
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Horrible that you could write in a language so well, but have nothing meaningful to say.
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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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Chinese people don't care about freedom, but they do care about justice.
Yiyun Li
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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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A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.
Yiyun Li
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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.
Yiyun Li
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I think our eyes are trained to look for what we want to see.
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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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What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?
Yiyun Li
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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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To write about a struggle amidst the struggling: one must hope that the muddling will end someday.
Yiyun Li