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Gao Xingjian Quotes
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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
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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
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Everyone has to have either this or that problem, if he can't find any problem, he loses all reason for living.
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Everybody can write poetry, just like everybody knows how to make love.
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Maybe there isn't a God after all, maybe there's only a universe rotating by itself like a millstone.
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Once the buttons are undone, you know how it'll all end. It's all in the game, there are no miracles.
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Realty exists only through experience, and it must be personal experience.
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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.
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Life is probably a tangle of love and hate permanently knotted together.
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They say it only takes an instant to have a dream; a dream can be compressed into hardtack.
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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.
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Dreams are more real than reality itself, they're closer to the self.
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The sand murmurs that it wants to swallow everything.
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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.
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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.
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Men always look differently at women, even if it's not your intention it is wrongly interpreted as such.
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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.
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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.
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Body odour (known also as scent of the immortals) is a disgusting condition with an awful, nauseating smell.
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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.
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Walk where your heart leads you, there are no restrictions and no burdens.
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Reality is myself, reality is only the perception of this instant and it can't be related to another person.
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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.
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Loneliness is a prerequisite for freedom. Freedom depends on the ability to reflect, and reflection can only begin when one is alone.
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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
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Quote of the day
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Gao Xingjian
Creative Commons
Born:
January 4, 1940
(age 84)
Bio:
Gao Xingjian is a Chinese émigré novelist, playwright, and critic who in 2000 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity.
Known for:
Soul Mountain (1990)
The Other Shore (2001)
One Man's Bible (1990)
Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather (1989)
Return to Painting (2001)
Most used words:
people
literature
logic
bad
reality
beauty
sand
hidden
life
freedom
memories
Gao Xingjian on Wikipedia
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