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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.

Yiyun Li

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Yiyun Li
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: November 4
Journalist
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Peking
People
Willing
System
Within
Work

More quotes by Yiyun Li

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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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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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Everybody contributes something to the system, and everybody suffers from the system.
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A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.
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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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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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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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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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To write about a struggle amidst the struggling: one must hope that the muddling will end someday.
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Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.
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It is a Chinese tradition that everyone has to be in everyone else's life.
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Mrs. Pang was once a nanny for me, and she spoils me the way I imagined kindhearted women would spoil an orphan, loving me for whom I am, exactly the opposite of my mother, whose love I have to earn with great effort and with little success.
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What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?
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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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Every place is a good place, only time goes wrong.
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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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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.
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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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Chinese people don't care about freedom, but they do care about justice.
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