Gao Xingjian Quotes

Lots of different ways to live and lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn't make a bit of difference. All that remains is a desert.

Well, right now I'm not dead. But when I am, it's like...I don't know, I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading. [...] An old one. It's up on a library shelf, so you're safe and everything, but the book hasn't been checked out for a long, long time. All you can do is wait. Just hope somebody'll pick it up and start reading.

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

In the end, living is defined by dying. Book-ended by oblivion, we are caught in the vice of terror, squeezed to bursting by the approaching end. Fear is ever-present, waiting to be called to the surface. Change brought fear, and fear brought destruction.

Men died as she watched, and they didn't care about what they had fought for.

A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?

I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God.

We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep--it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself.

O your life, your lonely lifeWhat have you ever done with it,And done with the great gift of consciousness?What will you ever do before Death's knifeProvides the answer ultimate and appropriate?As I for my part felt in my heart as one who falls,Falls in a parachute, falls endlessly, and feels the vastDraft of the abyss sucking him down and down,An endlessly helplessly falling and appalled clown:This is the way the night passes by, thisIs the overnight endless trip to the famous unfathomable abyss.

Yes, but the difference is that when you're dead and somebody yells, 'Everybody up, it's morning,' it's very hard to find your slippers.

Got to die of something," Giraldi observed. "Might as well put back a few pints while you wait to see what it is.

The idea of death robs inquiry of its passionate vitality and empties our efforts of their purpose by coming to one predestined conclusion, death. Why inquire if you already know the answer?

We are all born to die—the difference is the intensity with which we choose to live.

To face death itself should not daunt you. Fear of death is ridiculous, because as long as you are not dead you are alive, and when you are dead there is noting more to worry about!

Everything's plastic, we're all going to die sooner or later, so what does it matter.

Death is nothing, nor life either, for that matter. To die, to sleep, to pass into nothingness, what does it matter? Everything is an illusion.

There is not much difference between a mortal man and a dying man. The absurdity of making plans is only slightly more obvious in the second case.

The world is a sea in which we all must surely drown.

Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference.

I'm not dead. But when I am, it's likeI don't know, I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading.

It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.

So why would you care To get out of this place? You and me and all our friends, Such a happy human race. Eat, drink and be merry, For tomorrow we die.

What difference, at this point, does it make?