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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
Probably
Certain
America
Politeness
Amount

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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.
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Everybody contributes something to the system, and everybody suffers from the system.
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What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?
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Chinese people don't care about freedom, but they do care about justice.
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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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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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I think our eyes are trained to look for what we want to see.
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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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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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Every place is a good place, only time goes wrong.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.
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