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Horrible that you could write in a language so well, but have nothing meaningful to say.

Yiyun Li

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Yiyun Li
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: November 4
Journalist
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Peking
Meaningful
Horrible
Language
Write
Well
Nothing
Writing

More quotes by Yiyun Li

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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.
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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There is a certain amount of politeness here in America, which is probably more than just politeness.
Yiyun Li
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It is a Chinese tradition that everyone has to be in everyone else's life.
Yiyun Li
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I think our eyes are trained to look for what we want to see.
Yiyun Li
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Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.
Yiyun Li
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A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.
Yiyun Li
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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.
Yiyun Li
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If I didn't self-censor, I would be in jail, and then I wouldn't be effective at all.
Yiyun Li
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What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?
Yiyun Li
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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.
Yiyun Li
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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.
Yiyun Li
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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.
Yiyun Li
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Every place is a good place, only time goes wrong.
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
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Chinese people don't care about freedom, but they do care about justice.
Yiyun Li
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Only the smaller fish pay for the goverment's face-lift. The big ones - they just become bigger and fatter.
Yiyun Li
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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.
Yiyun Li
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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.
Yiyun Li