Quotes by Gao Xingjian - Page 2 | QuoteForever

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I hadn't originally intended to do any reading, what if I did read one book more or one book less, whether I read or not wouldn't make a difference, I would still be waiting to get cremated.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Book
Differences
Reading
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If everyone is a hero, then disasters and atrocities lose their meaning. It's only when certain people are heroes and others are not that these tragedies and disasters that mankind faces take on meaning.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Hero
People
Tragedy
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Various political parties, even if they're in direct opposition with one another, still say they are the spokesperson for the people. The writer must speak his own words and not get mixed up with politics.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Political Parties
Politics Political People
For The People
Mixed
Spokesperson
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If, while observing the boundless universe, the writer is able to scrutinise his own self as well as others, the resulting incisiveness of his observations will far surpass objective descriptions of reality.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Reality
Self
Writing
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Many intellectuals feel themselves to be Supermen who are spokesmen for the people. But in my opinion, they're to be pitied. Under Mao's dictatorship, these poor sheep suffered the same fate as everyone else.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Dictatorship
Fate
Mao
Suffered
Everyone Else
Intellectuals
For The People
In My Opinion
Pitied
Spokesmen
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When I lived in China, my works were already being banned, and I couldn't publish. In those days, when I was in China, I was writing for myself, so that's the process of writing for myself that was the most important thing.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Banned
Most Important Thing
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In my view the time for rousing revolutionary literature has passed, because the revolution has already revolutionised itself to death and has left behind only bitterness and a sort of weariness, listlessness and even nausea.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Literature
Nausea
Views
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In the history of literature there are many great enduring works which were not published in the lifetimes of the authors. If the authors had not achieved self-affirmation while writing, how could they have continued to write?
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Literature
Self
Writing
Achieved
Authors
Enduring
Lifetimes
Published
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Literature transcends national boundaries, racial boundaries. It goes deep into the issues that concern all human beings. That is why, when people read Greek tragedy - it doesn't matter who reads it - they are still moved by it.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Boundaries
Concern
Greek
Tragedy
Racial
Reads
Transcends
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The destruction of Chinese traditional culture didn't start in 1949. It started long before that, with the succession of revolutions. It was particularly bad during the Cultural Revolution, the destruction of traditional Chinese culture.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Chinese
Chinese Culture
Destruction
Revolution
Succession
Traditional
Revolutions
Cultural
Particularly
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I was born Chinese, and I write in Chinese. I don't think there's any need to evade this... to a writer, as to a person, what matters is not his political label or his nationality, but whether he is a person and whether his work is worth looking at.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Nationality
Label
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Literary revolution and revolutionary literature did not create a beautiful new world but instead divested literature of its basic nature, promoted violence, and, by resorting to linguistic violence, made a battlefield of this domain of spiritual freedom.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Beautiful
Literature
Spiritual
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The enterprise of describing something in language that has never been described before is a very difficult thing to do. When you decide to do away with old cliches or old phraseologies, and to come up with a new way of saying something, it's extremely difficult.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Cliche
Language
Way
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Literature remains an indispensable human activity, in which the reader and the writer are engaged of their own volition. Hence, literature has no duty to the masses or society, and ethical or moral pronouncements added by busybody critics are of no concern to the writer.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Ethical
Literature
Moral
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Some distance away is a white azalea bush which stuns me with its stately beauty. This is pristine natural beauty. it is irrepressible, seeks no reward, and is without goal, a beauty derived neither from symbolism nor metaphor and needing neither analogies nor associations.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Distance
Symbolism
White
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If you're not perfectly conscious of yourself, that self can be tyrannical; in relationship to others, anyone can become a tyrant. That's why no one can be a Superman. You have to go beyond yourself with a 'third eye' - self-awareness - because the one thing you cannot flee is yourself.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Relationship
Conscious
Eye
One Thing
Self
Anyone
Beyond
Flee
Perfectly
Superman
The One Thing
Third
Tyrannical
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To subvert is not the aim of literature, its value lies in discovering and revealing what is rarely known, little known, thought to be known but in fact not very well known of the truth of the human world. It would seem that truth is the unassailable and most basic quality of literature.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Quality
Lying
Writing
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When I first heard that I had won the prize, I thought that it was something for myself, that it was something personal, recognition of my writings. But there is such a strong reaction from Chinese people in particular. It's been very passionate, overwhelming and passionate, Chinese people from all over the world.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Overwhelming
Prize
Recognition
Myself World People
Chinese People
Reaction
Writings
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Since it was announced that I had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has condemned my works and criticized them harshly. All of my works are now banned from getting into China or being published in China. What author would want to return to a country that banned his or her books?
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Book
Chinese
Country
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Man tends to think that he is a creator, that he is like God. This is especially true of intellectuals, and in the last century, intellectuals tended to forget that they were like everyone else. Writing this book was a description of man going from a state of God back to a state of man, back to being a normal person.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Men
Book
Writing
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You should know that there is little you can seek in this world, that there is no need for you to be so greedy, in the end all you can achieve are memories, hazy, intangible, dreamlike memories which are impossible to articulate. When you try to relate them, there are only sentences, the dregs left from the filter of linguistic structures.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Filters
Memories
Trying
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Young man, nature is not frightening, it's people who are frightening! You just need to get to know nature and it will become friendly. This creature known as man is of course highly intelligent, he's capable of manufacturing almost anything from rumours to test-tube babies and yet he destroys two to three species every day. This is the absurdity of man.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Men
Baby
Intelligent
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In the century that has just passed, many of the intellectual elite went mad. It was as if, with the death of God, everyone suddenly turned into a saviour who wanted either to annihilate the obsolete world order or to establish a utopia. Naturally, there were writers among those who went mad. The fact that they had knowledge did not exempt intellectuals: there is madness everywhere. When one loses control over one's self, the result is madness.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Mad
Order
Self
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When I came overseas, I realized that there are many ideologies and many trends, and it's also very hard to produce honest art and honest literature. I decided that I didn't want to follow any of these ideologies or trends, because that's also a kind of pressure that doesn't allow absolute freedom. So I decided that I was only going to produce works that were satisfactory to me, and that meant not following any trends and being anti-ideological.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Art
Literature
Pressure
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If literature is to transcend political interference and return to being a testimony of man and his existential predicament, it needs first to break away from ideology. To be without "isms," is to return to the individual and to return to viewing the world through the eyes of the writer, an individual who relies on his own perceptions and does not act as a spokesman for the people. The people already have rulers and election campaigners speaking in their name.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Men
Eye
Names
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Language is inherently not concerned with logic. As an expression of the psychological activities of humankind, it simply follows a linear process as it seeks actualisation. Moreover, it does not obey the objective concepts of time and space that belong to the physical world. When the discussion of time and space is imported into linguistic art from scientific aims and research methods, that linguistic art is entirely reduced to trifling pseudo-philosophical issues.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
Art
Issues
Philosophical
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The human species does not necessarily move in stages from progress to progress ... history and civilization do not advance in tandem. From the stagnation of Medieval Europe to the decline and chaos in recent times on the mainland of Asia and to the catastrophes of two world wars in the twentieth century, the methods of killing people became increasingly sophisticated. Scientific and technological progress certainly does not imply that humankind as a result becomes more civilized.
Gao Xingjian / Novelist
War
Europe
Moving
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