Quotes from Gao Xingjian

Literature is subservient to nothing but truth.

Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.

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.

At the height of the Cultural Revolution, rather than risk having to face dire consequences for his accumulated writings, he burned several kilos of manuscripts (ten plays, and many short stories, poems, and essays). For him it was an ordeal to part with what he had written. Moreover, it took a long time to burn so much paper without creating smoke and arousing suspicions.

he was as if a "reborn" human being, a "fundamentalist" as a human being.

Life is not the same as manifestations of life. Real life, or in other words the basic substance of life, should be the former and not the latter. I had gone against real life because I was simply stringing together life's manifestations, so of course I wasn't able to accurately portray life and in the end only succeeded in distorting reality.

I say it's impossible to understand the world. He says he's talking about this half-bird half-fish creature, not about the world. I say there's no difference between this half-bird half-fish creature and the world.

Sá»± th?t không th? vui tai, v?a lòng, sá»± th?t ít nhi?u v?n buá»™c ph?i có ph?n gay g?t, n?u không th? thì sao mà nhìn ???c th?ng vào v?n m?nh c?a b?n thân cÆ¡ ch?!

I come out of the home for the aged, get on my bicycle, and think to myself that even if there is a communal grave it will in future not be of archaeological significance. Nevertheless, I have finally visited my deceased maternal grandmother who once bought me a spinning top.

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

Thus Buddha told the boddhisatva: the myriad phenomena are vanity, the absence of phenomena is also vanity.

La diferencia entre la novela y la filosofía nace de que la novela es una producción de sensibilidad, sumerge en una mezcla de deseos los códigos de los signos arbitrariamente construidos, y, en el momento en el que este sistema se disuelve y se transforma en células, aparece la vida. Entonces se asiste a la gestación y al nacimiento, lo cual es aún más interesante que los juegos del espíritu, pero, al igual que la vida, no responde a ninguna finalidad.

It is clear that life naturally ends, and when the end comes, fear vanishes, because fear is itself a manifestation of life. On losing awareness and consciousness, life abruptly ends, and there can be no further thinking and no further meaning.

For you, only life is of value, you have a lingering attachment to it, it continues to be interesting because there are still things to discover and amaze you. It is only life that can excite you. That is just how it is with you, isn't it?

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

Te bastará con familiarizarte con la naturaleza y ella se acercará a ti. El hombre, si es inteligente, por supuesto, es capaz de crearlo todo, desde las calumnias hasta los bebés probeta, pero al mismo tiempo extermina a diario dos o tres especies en el mundo. Este es el gran autoengaño de los hombres.

This 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.

La verdad de la vida, es decir, la naturaleza de la vida, debe ser tal como es y no de otro modo. Si me he apartado de la verdad es porque no he expuesto mas que una serie de fenómenos de la vida que no pueden, claro está, reflejarla como es debido. El resultado es que no he hecho más que seguir un camino equivocado deformando la realidad.

Si uno se pone a pensar sobre ello, la meta última de la vida humana es algo que carece de importancia, es como un enjambre de abejas. Si uno lo deja estar acabada lamentándolo, pero si lo coges los insectos te picarán, por lo que es preferible dejarlo estar y observarlo sin tocarlo.

Reading this chapter is optional but as you've read it you've read it.

Yours is much worse than Eastern! You've slapped together travel notes, moralistic ramblings, feelings, notes, jottings, untheoretical discussions, unfable-like fables, copied out some folk songs, added some legend-like nonsense of your own invention, and are calling it fiction!

I decided that I did not want to follow any of these ideologies or trends, because these also exerted a kind of pressure, and obstructed absolute creative freedom.

Since it was announced that I had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has condemned my works and criticized them harshly. All of my works are now banned from getting into China or being published in China. What author would want to return to a country that banned his or her books?

The story can also serve as a philosophy for getting on in society – to teach the morally superior man that each day he should investigate his own personal conduct, or that human life is suffering, or that suffering in life derives from the self. Or the story could be developed into numerous intricate and complex theories. It all depends on how the storyteller tells it.