Gao Xingjian

Literary Birthday – 4 January – Gao Xingjian

Happy Birthday, Gao Xingjian, born 4 January 1940.

Five Quotes

  1. When you use words, you’re able to keep your mind alive. Writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.
  2. 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.
  3. Experience has taught me that any kind of political grouping is oppressive. It’s the blind mass that crushes the individual.
  4. If you want to do anything, do it now, without compromise or concession, because you have only one life.
  5. 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 is a Chinese émigré novelist, playwright, and critic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000. In 1998, Gao was granted French citizenship. He is the author of Soul Mountain.

Source for Image

by Amanda Patterson

Are you interested in more authors’ birthdays? Please click here: Literary Birthday Calendar

Posted on: 4th January 2014
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