Gao Xingjian Quotes About Literature

Quotes about: Literature

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

  Gao Xingjian

  Yield, Literature, Starting

• In the history of literature there are many great enduring works which were not published in the lifetimes of the authors. If the authors had not achieved self-affirmation while writing, how could they have continued to write?

  Gao Xingjian

  Writing, Self, Literature

• To subvert is not the aim of literature, its value lies in discovering and revealing what is rarely known, little known, thought to be known but in fact not very well known of the truth of the human world. It would seem that truth is the unassailable and most basic quality of literature.

  Gao Xingjian

  Lying, Writing, Quality

• In my view the time for rousing revolutionary literature has passed, because the revolution has already revolutionised itself to death and has left behind only bitterness and a sort of weariness, listlessness and even nausea.

  Gao Xingjian

  Views, Nausea, Literature

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

  Gao Xingjian

  True Life, Fiction, Literature

  "Living without 'isms'". Interview with Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. August 1, 2008.

• 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?

  Gao Xingjian

  Country, Book, Chinese

• Literature remains an indispensable human activity, in which the reader and the writer are engaged of their own volition. Hence, literature has no duty to the masses or society, and ethical or moral pronouncements added by busybody critics are of no concern to the writer.

  Gao Xingjian

  Literature, Moral, Ethical

• Literature is subservient to nothing but truth.

  Gao Xingjian

  Literature, Subservient

• If literature is to transcend political interference and return to being a testimony of man and his existential predicament, it needs first to break away from ideology. To be without "isms," is to return to the individual and to return to viewing the world through the eyes of the writer, an individual who relies on his own perceptions and does not act as a spokesman for the people. The people already have rulers and election campaigners speaking in their name.

  Gao Xingjian

  Eye, Men, Names

• Literary revolution and revolutionary literature did not create a beautiful new world but instead divested literature of its basic nature, promoted violence, and, by resorting to linguistic violence, made a battlefield of this domain of spiritual freedom.

  Gao Xingjian

  Beautiful, Spiritual, Literature

• When I came overseas, I realized that there are many ideologies and many trends, and it's also very hard to produce honest art and honest literature. I decided that I didn't want to follow any of these ideologies or trends, because that's also a kind of pressure that doesn't allow absolute freedom. So I decided that I was only going to produce works that were satisfactory to me, and that meant not following any trends and being anti-ideological.

  Gao Xingjian

  Art, Pressure, Literature

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