“I hadn't originally intended to do any reading, what if I did read one book more or one book less, whether I read or not wouldn't make a difference, I would still be waiting to get cremated.”
Source: Soul Mountain (1989), ch. 12, p. 69
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Gao Xingjian 22
Chinese novelist and playwright 1940Related quotes

Speech on Religious Intolerance as presented at the Pittsburgh Opera House (14 October 1879).
Context: They say the religion of your fathers is good enough. Why should a father object to your inventing a better plow than he had? They say to me, do you know more than all the theologians dead? Being a perfectly modest man I say I think I do. Now we have come to the conclusion that every man has a right to think. Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequences like a man.

“It seemed to me that I had no right to burn a book I hadn't even read.”
The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934), A Cold Day
Source: I Capture the Castle

Letter 419, to William Plomer, 12 December 1957
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

The Triple Thinkers (1938) [Oxford University Press, 1948], Preface, p. ix