Gao Xingjian Quotes

30 Sourced Quotes

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
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.

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

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

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

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

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

Gao Xingjian
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.

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

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

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

Gao Xingjian
The sand murmurs that it wants to swallow everything.

Gao Xingjian
Not knowing what one is looking for is pure agony. Too much analytical thinking, too much logic, too many meanings! Life has no logic, so why does there have to be logic to explain what it means? Also, what is logic? I think I may need to break away from analytical thinking; this is the cause of all my anxieties.

Gao Xingjian
I came to the riverbank. The sand underfoot crunches and sounds like my grandmother sighing. She is fond of chattering endlessly, although no-one understands her. If you ask, Grandmother, what did you say? She will look up absentmindedly and, after a while, say, oh, you're back from school? Are you hungry? There are sweet potatoes in the bamboo steamer. When she chatters it is best not to interrupt; she is talking about when she was a young woman. But if you eavesdrop from behind her chair, she seems to be saying. It's hidden, it's hidden, everything is hidden, everything… All these memories are making noises in the sand under your feet.

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

Gao Xingjian
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.

Gao Xingjian
She says she doesn't know what to do! But he says coldly that he knows what he wants to do, but he can't.

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

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

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

Gao Xingjian
Grandfather, when you saw the tiger were you scared? Bad people scare me, not tigers.
Grandfather, have you ever run into bad people?
There aren't many tigers but lots of bad people, only you can't shoot people.

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

Gao Xingjian
Once literature is contrived as the hymn of the nation, the flag of the race, the mouthpiece of a political party or the voice of a class or a group it can be employed as a mighty and all-engulfing tool of propaganda. However, such literature loses what is inherent in literature, ceases to be literature, and becomes a substitute for power and profit.

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

Gao Xingjian
Life is fragile, yet to obstinately struggle is natural.

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

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

Gao Xingjian
The 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