“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
See more on GoodReads
“Lucy had to guard her reputation - her reputation for sanity - the way that a woman a hundred years before would have had to guard her reputation for virtue.”
― Nancy Werlin, quote from Impossible
“I'm Margarita Staples." She bowed in her harness. "Extreme librarian. Bookaneer.”
― China Miéville, quote from Un Lun Dun
“As the virtual world of electronic communication becomes the world many of us inhabit all the time, in turning to imaginative literature we may not be seeking mere reassurance nor be impelled by mere nostalgia. To enter with heart and mind into the world of the imagination may be to head deliberately and directly toward, or back toward, engagement with the real world. In one of T. S. Eliot’s poems a bird sings, “Mankind cannot bear very much reality.” I’ve always thought that bird was mistaken, or was talking only about some people. I find it amazing how much of the real world most of us can endure. Not only endure, but need, desire, crave. Reality is life. Where we suffocate is in the half-life of unreality, untruth, imitation, fakery, the almost-true that is not true. To be human is to live both within and beyond the narrow band of what-happens-now, in the vast regions of the past and the possible, the known and the imagined: our real world, our true Now.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from Tales from Earthsea
“Batman doesn't have to put up with this shit--why should we?”
― Caitlin Moran, quote from How to Be a Woman
“Holy Mica, we were true humanists over there, on Earth. Humanism was the backbone of our personalities; in our worship of Man, in our love of Man, we even approached anthropocentrism - and here we are suddenly horrified to catch ourselves thinking, 'Are these really humans? Is it possible they are capable of becoming humans, even with time?'.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, quote from Hard to Be a God
The Year of Secret A...
Prisoner of Tehran
Dark Taste of Raptur...
Special Forces
Dearly, Departed
The Lost WifeBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
