Gao Xingjian Quotes

A lot of times, I'm singing things that are observational and am definitely including myself.

Writing on 'Love' is so steeped in self-analysis. The writer's room can feel like therapy.

I have never dissected my personal life. What sense would it make?

I've been living with myself all of my life, so I know all of me. So when I watch me, all I see is me. It's boring.

I find myself fascinating.

I am not very introspective.

Much of the time, we're transfixed by all of the ways we can reflect ourselves into the world. And we can barely find the time to reflect deeply back in on our own selves.

A journal of the 'subjective' kind I have always thought foolish, as nurturing a morbid self -consciousness in the writer; and yet, alone so much as I am, it is well to have some sort of a ventilator from the interior.

I find myself a fascinating subject.

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.

I don't interest myself that much.

Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people's actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.

Looking at yourself in a mirror isn't exactly a study of life.

I don't know what other people are doing - I just know about me.

So I observe life a little bit, rather than participating in it.

If you think my music is sentimental and self-absorbed, I agree with you.

I don't consciously use my own life or experience at all.

All my songs come from me because I only seem able to write about myself and my experiences.

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

In actual fact, I've never been one, even from childhood, to kind of analyze myself very much.

The examined life is no picnic.

Madame Bovary is myself.

I've always enjoyed people studying themselves in the mirror, and I also enjoy those 'walk and feel bad' shots. I like anything that isolates people and focuses them on themselves, or makes us focus on their faces as they're going through something.

I like to think of myself as an observer.