Quotes from Ma Jian

I have to live within my memories, within my private universe, and continually return to China, the land where my thoughts are locked. This is a very painful kind of existence, this feeling of nowhereness.

In 1989, I was on Tiananmen Square with the students, living in their makeshift tents and joining their jubilant singing of the Internationale. In the two decades since, each time that I have gone back, visions from those days seem to return with increasing persistence.

It is vitally important for me, both personally and for my writing, to be able to return to China freely, so being barred entry has caused me deep concern and distress.

I meant that the Chinese people are not aware of their own entrapment. They believe they live in a free society, but don't realize how much they are being monitored and controlled, how much the information they receive is restricted and warped, until they step out of line, that is, and feel the heavy hand of the state fall on them.

The Beijing Olympics represent China's grand entrance onto the world stage and confirmation of its new superpower status.

I believe that the power of literature is stronger than the power of tyranny.

The great quality of the 'Three Kingdoms' is that it seems to encapsulate and portray every facet of the Chinese personality.

I left Beijing in 1987, shortly before my books were banned there, but have returned continually.

I am a writer. Being critical is a writer's responsibility.

Living in London is like being on a luxury cruise liner.

I wanted to analyse and understand how the Chinese people could have their lives so crushed by fear.

I believe that the Tibetans should have the right to control their own destinies and decide for themselves whether they want to be part of China or not. But this view isn't shared by most Chinese, or even the leaders of most Western democracies. As long as the Communist Party is in power, there is little hope for Tibet.

When people are poor, they find ways of making things taste like fish.

The Chinese have made a faustian pact with the government, agreeing to forsake demands for political and intellectual freedom in exchange for more material comfort. They live prosperous lives in which any expression of pain is forbidden.

I am completely in favour of dialogue and engagement. But it must be a true, open dialogue.

Beijing Coma took me 10 years to finish.

The Chinese people have been forced to forget the Tiananmen massacre. There has been no public debate about the event, no official apology. The media aren't allowed to mention it. Still today people are being persecuted and imprisoned for disseminating information about it.

I left Beijing in the late 1980s to live in Hong Kong because, having been blacklisted by the government, I couldn't publish my works on the mainland.

My hope is that the Chinese government will come to realise that it is futile to repress free speech, and that contrary to what they believe a regime's strength rests not its suppression of a plurality of opinions and ideas, but in its capacity and willingness to encourage them.

Everything I was I carry with me, everything I will be lies waiting on the road ahead.

I feel I have walked onto a stage. The people around me are absorbed in their parts, putting on this great show, but nothing seems real. Every object looks like a prop. Since I have no part I am reduced to the role of a spectator, but there is nowhere to sit, so I have to mingle with the actors on stage. It is a terrible feeling.

I will not let a political party tell me how to live, when to die or what to believe in. Our souls are linked to the universe, but we can never see heaven, because our flesh ties us to the earth and the people around us. But when the people around you have lost their will to be free, then earth becomes a hell.

Beauty can make a woman rich, but if she relies solely on her looks to get by, she'll always remain under a man's thumb.

I left Beijing because I wanted to be alone and to forge my own path, but I know now that no path is solitary, we all tread across other people's beginnings and ends.