Gao Xingjian
Gao Xingjian
Gao Xingjianis a Chinese émigré novelist, playwright, and critic who in 2000 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature “for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity.” He is also a noted translator, screenwriter, stage director, and a celebrated painter. In 1998, Gao was granted French citizenship...
NationalityChinese
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth4 January 1940
CountryChina
lying trying alive
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.
memories trying filters
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.
mind
When you use words, you're able to keep your mind alive. Writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.
crushes experience grouping mass taught
Experience has taught me that any kind of political grouping is oppressive. It's the blind mass that crushes the individual.
Writing eases my suffering... writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.
both chinese close grand link literature painting western
In the grand tradition, both Chinese and Western painting have a close link with literature,
eye men names
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.
beautiful spiritual literature
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.
loneliness reflection ability
Loneliness is a prerequisite for freedom. Freedom depends on the ability to reflect, and reflection can only begin when one is alone.
writing poetry making-love
Everybody can write poetry, just like everybody knows how to make love.
truth refuse subservient
Truth refuses to be subservient to either politics or the market.
writing reality self
If, while observing the boundless universe, the writer is able to scrutinise his own self as well as others, the resulting incisiveness of his observations will far surpass objective descriptions of reality.
book writing men
Man tends to think that he is a creator, that he is like God. This is especially true of intellectuals, and in the last century, intellectuals tended to forget that they were like everyone else. Writing this book was a description of man going from a state of God back to a state of man, back to being a normal person.
giving stories details
When you're telling a story, you've got to give details.