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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
Amount
Probably
Certain
America
Politeness

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It is a Chinese tradition that everyone has to be in everyone else's life.
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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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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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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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To write about a struggle amidst the struggling: one must hope that the muddling will end someday.
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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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What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?
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Everybody contributes something to the system, and everybody suffers from the system.
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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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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.
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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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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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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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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 our eyes are trained to look for what we want to see.
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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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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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Horrible that you could write in a language so well, but have nothing meaningful to say.
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I would never describe a cloud as 'fluffy'—in Chinese or in English.
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