Gao Xingjian is a Chinese-born French writer, playwright, and artist. Gao Xingjian was born on January 4, 1940, in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, China. He grew up during a tumultuous period in Chinese history, marked by the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War. His family suffered during the Cultural Revolution, and Gao himself experienced political persecution. Gao Xingjian studied French at the Beijing Foreign Studies University and later pursued a master’s degree in French Literature at the University of Paris. His exposure to French literature and philosophy greatly influenced his intellectual and artistic development.
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?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.If everyone is a hero, then disasters and atrocities lose their meaning. It’s only when certain people are heroes and others are not that these tragedies and disasters that mankind faces take on meaning.“Truth refuses to be subservient to either politics or the market.” ~ Gao Xingjian“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“Everybody can write poetry, just like everybody knows how to make love.” ~ Gao Xingjian“You contemplate and you wander without any worries, between heaven and earth, in your own private world, and in this way you acquire supreme freedom.” ~ Gao Xingjian“What is essential is whether it is perceived and not whether it exists. To exist and yet not to be perceived is the same as not exist.” ~ Gao Xingjian“Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.” ~ Gao Xingjian“Some distance away is a white azalea bush which stuns me with its stately beauty. This is pristine natural beauty. it is irrepressible, seeks no reward, and is without goal, a beauty derived neither from symbolism nor metaphor and needing neither analogies nor associations.” ~ Gao Xingjian“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“Loneliness is a prerequisite for freedom. Freedom depends on the ability to reflect, and reflection can only begin when one is alone.” ~ Gao Xingjian“If you want to do anything, do it now, without compromise or concession, because you have only one life.” ~ Gao Xingjian“Walk where your heart leads you, there are no restrictions and no burdens.” ~ Gao Xingjian
