Quotes from Gao Xingjian

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.

When fashion sweeps in, artists follow suit. I think this is the malady of contemporary art.

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

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

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

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.

Freedom is the basic prerequisite for writing.

A writer has to fully defend his rights and his own worth.

I believe in science but I also believe in fate.

If you want to do anything, do it now, without compromise or concession, because you have only one life.

I don't want to be a strong hero who can save society. I just want to save myself.

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.

Life is fragile, yet to obstinately struggle is natural.

Literature hasn't come up with any new themes. The literature of all different times - it's still dealing with how one resolves issues of existence.

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.

Since childhood, I'd dreamed of making a film, but producers in France and Germany wanted to make commercial films with chinoiserie. I refused.

The human need for language is not simply for the transmission of meaning, it is at the same time listening to and affirming a person's existence.

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

For me, writing [was] a question of survival...I could not trust anyone, even my family. The atmosphere was so poisoned. People even in your own family could turn you in.

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.

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.

It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.

Truth refuses to be subservient to either politics or the market.

There are numerous layers to truth, and the simple and superficial statement of facts cannot satisfy the writer.