Gao Xingjian - Soul Mountain (1990)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gao Xingjian