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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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Yiyun Li
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: November 4
Journalist
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Peking
Either
Wrong
Sense
Immune
Action
China
Person
Stronger
Something
Completely
Taking
Control

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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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Only the smaller fish pay for the goverment's face-lift. The big ones - they just become bigger and fatter.
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Everybody contributes something to the system, and everybody suffers from the system.
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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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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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Horrible that you could write in a language so well, but have nothing meaningful to say.
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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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Every place is a good place, only time goes wrong.
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It is a Chinese tradition that everyone has to be in everyone else's life.
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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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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.
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