Gao Xingjian Quotes

There is no seeing. Seeing is only being.

It was in the forest. No one saw it or heard it. So did it actually happen?

Is perception equivalent to existence?

Truth is a golden thread, seen here and there In small bright specks upon the visible side Of our strange being's party-coloured web.

Because of its concrete content, sense-certainty immediately appears as the richest kind of knowledge, indeed a knowledge of infinite wealth for which no bounds can be found, either when we reach out into space and time in which it is dispersed, or when we take a bit of this wealth, and by division enter into it. Moreover, sense-certainty appears to be the truest knowledge ... but, in the event, this very certainty proves itself to be the most abstract and poorest truth. All that it says about what it knows is just that it is; and its truth contains nothing but the sheer being of the thing.

Subjectivity is objective.

Perception of a state is not the state.

Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.

Reality is only just a word.

A thing either is what it appears to be; or it is not, but yet appears to be; or it is, but does not appear to be; or it is not, and does not appear to be.

To be is to be perceived

Let us affirm what seems to be the truth, that, whether one is or is not, one and the others in relation to themselves and one another, all of them, in every way, are and are not, and appear to be and appear not to be.

There is no frontier between being and appearing.

I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.

That which is cannot be true.

Reality seems so simple. We just open our eyes and there it is. But that doesn't mean it is simple.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

What you see is what you see.

On the other hand, for the whole human being who wills, feels, and represents, external reality is given simultaneously and with as much certitude as his own self.

Yet, the Universe is real enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself.

The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.

I'm not big into images. I'm into reality.

I think art is more glorious than life but not more real.

Where you are in consciousness has everything to do with what you see in experience.

There may not be one Truth - there may be several truths - but saying that is not to say that reality doesn't exist.