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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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Yiyun Li
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: November 4
Journalist
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Peking
Certain
America
Politeness
Amount
Probably

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Chinese people don't care about freedom, but they do care about justice.
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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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A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.
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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.
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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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There are people who are willing to work within the system, and people who don't want to work with the system at all.
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It is a Chinese tradition that everyone has to be in everyone else's life.
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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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Only the smaller fish pay for the goverment's face-lift. The big ones - they just become bigger and fatter.
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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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What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?
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Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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Every place is a good place, only time goes wrong.
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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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