Some people in China don't look at freedom of speech as an abstract ideal, but more as a means to an end. Yiyun Li More Quotes by Yiyun Li More Quotes From Yiyun Li Every place is a good place, only time goes wrong. Yiyun Li good-place only-time But loneliness is as delusive a belief in the pertinence of the world as is love: in choosing to feel lonely, as in choosing to love, one carves a space next to oneself to be filled by others - a friend, a lover, a toy poodle, a violinist on the radio. Yiyun Li space lonely loneliness In film, you have to present everything on the screen so it's the opposite of what I usually do with storytelling. It forced me to think about how people walk, where they sit at that moment. With Princess of Nebraska, it was just fun to watch because the movie was so far from the story. It was very much a different story. Yiyun Li princess fun thinking There are people who are willing to work within the system, and people who don't want to work with the system at all. Yiyun Li people A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time. Yiyun Li mutual dreamer real Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime. Yiyun Li heartless innocent-person crime Mrs. Pang was once a nanny for me, and she spoils me the way I imagined kindhearted women would spoil an orphan, loving me for whom I am, exactly the opposite of my mother, whose love I have to earn with great effort and with little success. Yiyun Li effort mother opposites I think our eyes are trained to look for what we want to see. Yiyun Li eye thinking One easy mistake to make with the first novel is to expand the short story. Some things are better as a story; you cannot dilute things into a novel. I think the first hundred pages of a novel are very important. That's where you set things up: the world, the characters. Once you've set that up, it'll be much easier. Yiyun Li mistake character thinking Your characters are always your children. And while you are writing, you're keeping them safe. Now they're ready to go into the world and it's sad. I'm happy with the way the novel came out but all the characters' ending really saddened me. Yiyun Li writing character children She wonders if this is what people call falling in love, the desire to be with someone for every minute of the rest of her life so strong that sometimes she is frightened of herself. Yiyun Li falling-in-love strong people You can write about a country without taking a stand, but you cannot write about a country without noting that there's history, and that there's politics going on. To me, that's the same if you write about America. You don't have to write about politics, but the politics have to be present in the characters. Yiyun Li writing character country Almost all of the stories in The Matchmaker, the Apprentice, and the Football Fan are told in the first person, yet, depending on the angle and distance of the narrator, they exert different effects. The best are those in which the speaker never poses as an objective outsider. (...) Other stories are damaged by the urge to distance the narrator. Yiyun Li narrators distance football Regarding heroism, I grew up in a culture where you learn about heroes and heroines all the time. In a way, when you call someone a hero or heroine, it's the same as calling them a villain. Yiyun Li hero calling culture I always tell my students to go back after a hundred pages and rewrite from the beginning. It's really harder if you've already finished four hundred pages and realize the first hundred aren't working. Yiyun Li four pages firsts I would never describe a cloud as 'fluffy'—in Chinese or in English. Yiyun Li fluffy chinese clouds What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive? Yiyun Li systematic alive way Only the smaller fish pay for the goverment's face-lift. The big ones - they just become bigger and fatter. Yiyun Li bigs faces pay In China, your freedom is always limited, but this limitation applies to almost everyone. If someone does injustice to you, though, you have to find a way to avenge yourself - even by illegal measures. In a sense, injustice is more personal. This idea has always been in Chinese history. I think we read about freedom of speech, or lack of freedom of speech, in China so often. But I don't think people here in America think about how justice, or the idea of justice, is so important in a Chinese setting. It's probably more important than freedom of speech in the Chinese mindset at this moment. Yiyun Li justice people thinking What a long way it is from one life to another: yet why write if not for that distance; if things can be let go, every before replaced by an after. Yiyun Li distance letting-go writing
