Ma Jian Quotes

I'm a writer obsessed with remembering: with remembering the past of America above all - and above all, that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to forgetfulness.

We have a national memory in this country of about 7 minutes.

Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory.

For more than 1000 years our spiritual traditions and common values have been nurtured and begotten here. Today, as we restore the value of patriotism, historical memory and cultural tradition, we are seeking firmer bonds with Mount Athos.

Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

Ultimately, there is no compromise. Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not.

I hope that memory is valued - that we do not lose memory.

All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.

We see book-burning as a crime against humanity: it's intolerable because books represent a kind of freedom to us.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

These places, and the ancient things you know, You won't know soon. I'm working on it now.'

The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.

Censorship is the conscience of society.

When the guns boom, the arts die.

The control of the past depends above all on the training of memory

Stories are one of the means by which a culture preserves its identity.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

My grandmother, Betty Bertha Bright, lived in the Armenian block in Kolkata. After '36 Chowringhee Lane,' we haven't seen that part of the city in films.

Long before we created libraries, or even books, poetry was the way we humans remembered who we were, a primary means of documenting and contemplating our lives.

Without oblivion, there is no remembrance possible. When both oblivion and memory are wise, when the general soul of man is clear, melodious, true, there may come a modern Iliad as memorial of the Past.

What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written.

All of my works are performance pieces, as is true for many writers of color, writers who have indigenous roots - because our basis is spoken word.

Men of ideas vanish when freedom vanishes.

A nation that forgets its past has no future.

When people try to stop free speech, stop people from talking, it creates pressure in the system that might cause people to act out.