“La libertad no es un derecho del hombre que concede el cielo, y la libertad de soñar tampoco se adquiere desde el nacimiento: es una capacidad que hay que preservar, una conciencia, sobre todo porque las pesadillas no paran de perturbarla.”
― Gao Xingjian, quote from One Man's Bible
“Although as an individual Gao had readily denounced the Chinese authorities for the events of 4 June in the French and Italian media, he refused to compromise his integrity as a writer. His stance angered both political sides.”
― Gao Xingjian, quote from One Man's Bible
“Prior to that I had written many works but I was unable to present them for publication, in fact I had burned them all.”
― Gao Xingjian, quote from One Man's Bible
“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.”
― Gao Xingjian, quote from One Man's Bible
“he was as if a “reborn” human being, a “fundamentalist” as a human being.”
― Gao Xingjian, quote from One Man's Bible
“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.”
― Gao Xingjian, quote from One Man's Bible
“I did not think about what sort of people might read it. In fact, I was writing it for myself.”
― Gao Xingjian, quote from One Man's Bible
“Another issue was language, the problem of expressing these themes in language and the problem of how much one can articulate in language.”
― Gao Xingjian, quote from One Man's Bible
“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, quote from One Man's Bible
Gao Xingjian
Born place: in Taizhou, Jiangsu, China
Born date January 4, 1940
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“...pergunto a mim próprio até que ponto o silêncio absoluto
e o completo isolamento infligidos a um jovem encerrado numa cela podem,
antes de o levarem à loucura, dar azo a uma verdadeira vida imaginativa.
Vida de tal modo intensa , de tal modo viva, que o indivíduo se desdobra literalmente.
Levanta voo e vai vagabundear por onde lhe apetece. (...), os castelos no ar que o seu
fecundo espírito inventa, que ele cria com uma imaginação tão incrivelmente fértil que, (...),
chega a pensar que está a viver tudo quanto vai sonhando.”
― Henri Charrière, quote from Papillon
“I wondered what that was like, to hold someone’s hand. I bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone’s hand.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, quote from Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
“From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from A Wizard of Earthsea
“Love Means Not Ever Having To Say You're Sorry.”
― Erich Segal, quote from Love Story
“...when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Persuasion
Bully
Wolf Hall
Animal Dreams
Solaris
Crooked Kingdom
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