Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Yiyun Li

Image
I would never describe a cloud as 'fluffy'—in Chinese or in English.
Yiyun Li
Image
What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?
Yiyun Li
Image
Everybody contributes something to the system, and everybody suffers from the system.
Yiyun Li
Image
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
Image
A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.
Yiyun Li
Image
I think our eyes are trained to look for what we want to see.
Yiyun Li
Image
If I didn't self-censor, I would be in jail, and then I wouldn't be effective at all.
Yiyun Li
Image
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
Image
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.
Yiyun Li
Image
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
Image
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.
Yiyun Li
Image
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
Image
There are people who are willing to work within the system, and people who don't want to work with the system at all.
Yiyun Li
Image
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
Image
There is a certain amount of politeness here in America, which is probably more than just politeness.
Yiyun Li
Image
Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.
Yiyun Li
Image
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.
Yiyun Li
Image
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.
Yiyun Li
Image
Almost all of the stories in The Matchmaker, the Apprentice, and the Football Fan are told in the first person, yet, depending on the angle and distance of the narrator, they exert different effects. The best are those in which the speaker never poses as an objective outsider. (...) Other stories are damaged by the urge to distance the narrator.
Yiyun Li
Image
Chinese people don't care about freedom, but they do care about justice.
Yiyun Li