Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Yiyun Li
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: November 4
Journalist
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Peking
People
Memories
Revised
Fact
Rewritten
Individual
Wiped
History
Recent
Also
Isolation
Well
Collective
Think
Constantly
Thinking
China
More quotes by Yiyun Li
What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?
Yiyun Li
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.
Yiyun Li
There is a certain amount of politeness here in America, which is probably more than just politeness.
Yiyun Li
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
If I didn't self-censor, I would be in jail, and then I wouldn't be effective at all.
Yiyun Li
A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.
Yiyun Li
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.
Yiyun Li
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.
Yiyun Li
Horrible that you could write in a language so well, but have nothing meaningful to say.
Yiyun Li
To write about a struggle amidst the struggling: one must hope that the muddling will end someday.
Yiyun Li
It is a Chinese tradition that everyone has to be in everyone else's life.
Yiyun Li
I would never describe a cloud as 'fluffy'—in Chinese or in English.
Yiyun Li
