Yu Hua Quotes & Sayings

In times like these, who had either the leisure or the inclination to indulge in a touch of elegance? — Yu Hua

It's better to live an ordinary life. If you go on striving for this and that, you'll end up paying with your life. — Yu Hua

The residents of the the town are attracted by the words and the pictures on the signs. They know full well the perils posed by overpopulation. Many of them have mastered the use of several types of contraceptives. Now they understand the dangers posed by traffic accidents. They know that even though overpopulation is perilous, the living must do their best to have a good time and avoid being killed in traffic accident. — Yu Hua

My mother often said, as long as a person is happy at work, then poverty is nothing to be ashamed of. — Yu Hua

Those immediately behind number 50 were anguish personified. They let loose an endless stream of foul language and it was hard to tell whether they were cursing themselves or cursing something else. My neighbours and I in the last third of the queue only felt a pang of disappointment whereas those who just missed out on the coupon were like people who see the duck that they had cooked flap its wings and fly away. — Yu Hua

With relief I arrived at memory's peak,
and a broader landscape came into view. — Yu Hua

We were fishers of memory waiting on the banks of time and waiting for the past to swallow the date. — Yu Hua

Three or four years ago, a city education bureau announced a new measure to raise the quality of local teachers and enable graduating high school seniors to be more competitive in the university entrance examination. — Yu Hua

The more boldly a man dares, the more richly his land bears — Yu Hua

revolution was just a short step away from counterrevolution. — Yu Hua

If literature truly possesses a mysterious power, I think perhaps it is precisely this: that one can read a book by a writer of a different time, a different country, a different race, a different language, and a different culture and there encounter a sensation that is one's very own. — Yu Hua

You don't have to pay tax on bullshit — Yu Hua

At first, writing actually felt the more arduous of the two activities. But in order to reach cultural-center nirvana, I forced myself to continue. I was young then and it was no easy matter to persuade my bottom to maintain such constant intimacy with my chair — Yu Hua

So things remained until one day, many years later, I happened upon a line in a poem by Heine: "Death is the cooling night." That childhood memory, lost for so long, suddenly restored itself to my quivering heart, returning freshly washed, in limpid clarity, never again to leave me. If literature truly possesses a mysterious power, I think perhaps it is precisely this: that one can read a book by a writer of a different time, a different country, a different race, a different language, and a different culture and there encounter a sensation that is one's very own. Heine put into words the feeling I had as a child when I lay napping in the morgue. And that, I tell myself, is literature. — Yu Hua

No matter how lucky a person is, the moment he decides he wants to die, there's nothing that will keep him alive. — Yu Hua

My emotional state then was cramped and confined, like a room with tightly sealed windows and doors: although love's footsteps could be heard outside the room, I felt they were steps heading somewhere else--until one day when the steps came to a halt and the bell rang. — Yu Hua

People fear getting famous just as pigs fear getting fat. Reflecting the observation that fame invites a fall just as a fattened pig invites the butcher. — Yu Hua

Your life is given to you by your parents. If you don't want to live, you have to ask them first. — Yu Hua

The emperor beckons me; he wants me to marry his daughter.
The road to the capital is long and distant; I don't want her. — Yu Hua

As soon as the train pulled into the station, the red guards would pour out of doors and windows like toothpaste squirting endlessly from a tube. — Yu Hua

... because my memory had caught up with the world that had gone away. — Yu Hua

It was just as summer arrived that I met an old man named Fugui. — Yu Hua