Gao Xingjian Quotes

I believe in science but I also believe in fate.

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

As a male writer, women are always what men pursue, and their world is always a mystery. So I always tried to present as many views as possible on women's worlds.

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

Love is so holy, so confusing. It makes a man anxious, tormented. Love, how can I define it?

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.

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.

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

With the beginning of life, comes the thirst for truth, whereas the ability to lie is gradually acquired in the process of trying to stay alive.

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

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

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?

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

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

Young man, nature is not frightening, it's people who are frightening! You just need to get to know nature and it will become friendly. 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.

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

Walk where your heart leads you, there are no restrictions and no burdens.

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.

Writing eases my suffering . . . writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.

Only a lunatic would think that art is superior to nature.