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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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Everybody contributes something to the system, and everybody suffers from the system.
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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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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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What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?
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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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Every place is a good place, only time goes wrong.
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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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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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I think our eyes are trained to look for what we want to see.
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A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.
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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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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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Horrible that you could write in a language so well, but have nothing meaningful to say.
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In film, you have to present everything on the screen so it's the opposite of what I usually do with storytelling. It forced me to think about how people walk, where they sit at that moment. With Princess of Nebraska, it was just fun to watch because the movie was so far from the story. It was very much a different story.
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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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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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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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Chinese people don't care about freedom, but they do care about justice.
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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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Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.
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