A good man never fights with a woman.

Indeed, loft aspirations produce ideas.

You're safe only when you can't see anybody.

Freedom is the basic prerequisite for writing.

Literature is subservient to nothing but truth.

I believe in science but I also believe in fate.

The sand murmurs that it wants to swallow everything.

Life is fragile, yet to obstinately struggle is natural.

When you're telling a story, you've got to give details.

Only a lunatic would think that art is superior to nature.

A writer has to fully defend his rights and his own worth.

Truth refuses to be subservient to either politics or the market.

I want to write a novel so profound that it would suffocate a fly.

When God talks to humans he doesn't want humans to hear his voice.

Dreams are more real than reality itself, they're closer to the self.

Everybody can write poetry, just like everybody knows how to make love.

Life is probably a tangle of love and hate permanently knotted together.

Soul Mountain, the story of one man’s quest for inner peace and freedom.

Walk where your heart leads you, there are no restrictions and no burdens.

Realty exists only through experience, and it must be personal experience.

I don't want to be a strong hero who can save society. I just want to save myself.

Writing eases my suffering . . . writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.

Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.

They say it only takes an instant to have a dream; a dream can be compressed into hardtack.

When fashion sweeps in, artists follow suit. I think this is the malady of contemporary art.

Love is so holy, so confusing. It makes a man anxious, tormented. Love, how can I define it?

Once the buttons are undone, you know how it'll all end. It's all in the game, there are no miracles.

Maybe there isn't a God after all, maybe there's only a universe rotating by itself like a millstone.

If you want to do anything, do it now, without compromise or concession, because you have only one life.

Men always look differently at women, even if it's not your intention it is wrongly interpreted as such.

It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.

When you use words, you're able to keep your mind alive. Writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.

Reality is myself, reality is only the perception of this instant and it can't be related to another person.

Body odour (known also as scent of the immortals) is a disgusting condition with an awful, nauseating smell.

Everyone has to have either this or that problem, if he can't find any problem, he loses all reason for living.

There are numerous layers to truth, and the simple and superficial statement of facts cannot satisfy the writer.

Experience has taught me that any kind of political grouping is oppressive. It's the blind mass that crushes the individual.

Loneliness is a prerequisite for freedom. Freedom depends on the ability to reflect, and reflection can only begin when one is alone.

What is essential is whether it is perceived and not whether it exists. To exist and yet not to be perceived is the same as not exist.

In the snow outside my window I see a small green frog, one eye blinking and the other wide open, unmoving, looking at me. I know this is God.

Since childhood, I'd dreamed of making a film, but producers in France and Germany wanted to make commercial films with chinoiserie. I refused.

With the beginning of life, comes the thirst for truth, whereas the ability to lie is gradually acquired in the process of trying to stay alive.

The human need for language is not simply for the transmission of meaning, it is at the same time listening to and affirming a person's existence.

Literature hasn't come up with any new themes. The literature of all different times - it's still dealing with how one resolves issues of existence.

You contemplate and you wander without any worries, between heaven and earth, in your own private world, and in this way you acquire supreme freedom.

A good work can be communicated across languages ... [provided one does not] fall into the trap of narrow-minded nationalistic or chauvinistic thinking.

When I completed writing 'Soul Mountain,' I more or less closed the accounts with China for myself. I was 50 years old when I left, so China is already within me.

As a male writer, women are always what men pursue, and their world is always a mystery. So I always tried to present as many views as possible on women's worlds.

I decided that I did not want to follow any of these ideologies or trends, because these also exerted a kind of pressure, and obstructed absolute creative freedom.

For me, writing [was] a question of survival...I could not trust anyone, even my family. The atmosphere was so poisoned. People even in your own family could turn you in.

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