Soul Mountain Quotes

“You should know that there is little you can seek in this world, that there is no need for you to be so greedy, in the end all you can achieve are memories, hazy, intangible, dreamlike memories which are impossible to articulate. When you try to relate them, there are only sentences, the dregs left from the filter of linguistic structures.”
― Xingjian Gao, Soul Mountain

“Young man, nature is not frightening, it's people who are frightening! You just need to get to know nature and it will become friendly. This creature known as man is of course highly intelligent, he's capable of manufacturing almost anything from rumours to test-tube babies and yet he destroys two to three species every day. This is the absurdity of man.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“I believe in science but I also believe in fate.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“Only a lunatic would think that art is superior to nature.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“Reality exists only through experience, and it must be personal experience. However, once related, even personal experience becomes a narrative.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“Men always look differently at women, even if it's not your intention it is wrongly interpreted as such.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“Soul Mountain, the story of one man’s quest for inner peace and freedom.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“When a man gets to middle age shouldn’t he look for a peaceful and stable existence, find a not-too-demanding sort of a job, stay in a mediocre position, become a husband and a father, set up a comfortable home, put money in the bank and add to it every month so there’ll be something for old age and a little left over for the next generation?”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“لا زلت أعتقد أننى أفهم كل شىء.
الأشياء تجرى خلفى، هناك دوما عين غريبة تترصدنى،
الأفضل هو التظاهر بالفهم.
التظاهر بالفهم،
فى الحقيقة، إنى لا أفهم شيئاً،
لا أفهم شيئاً على الإطلاق،
هكذا الأمر، لا أكثر.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“Sitting at rest know not to discuss the shortcomings of other people Setting out on a journey fully appreciate the beauty of the dragon river”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“El hombre no puede deshacerse de esta máscara, es la proyección de su carne y de su alma. Se le pega a la piel, jamás podrá liberarse de ella, pero está sumido en un profundo asombro, como si no pudiera creer que se trate de sí mismo.
Esta imposibilidad de abandonar la máscara le causaba inmensos sufrimientos. Una vez que se la ha puesto, es imposible arrancársela, porque no tiene voluntad personal, o, si la tiene, no conoce el modo de expresarla y prefiere no mostrarla. La máscara deja así la impresión de un hombre que se contempla eternamente en el más profundo de los asombros.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“Mucizeler inanmadım hiç, kadere inanmadığım gibi; ama ümitsiz bir durumdaysanız , mucizelerden başka ümit bağlayacağınız ne kalır?”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“You’ve lived in the city for a long time and need to feel that you have a hometown.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“Tú sabes que no hago nada más que hablarme a mí mismo para distraer mi soledad. Sabes que mi soledad es irremediable, nadie puede consolarme, no puedo recurrir a otro que a mí como interlocutor de mis discusiones.
En este largo monólogo, <> es el objeto de mi relato, en realidad es un yo que me escucha atentamente, <> no es más que me propia sombra.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“Reading this chapter is optional but as you've read it you've read it.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“I hadn't planned on climbing mountains.
But now that you're in the mountains, be ready to suffer.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“At that time the individual did not exist. There was not an awareness of a distinction between “I” and “you”. The birth of I derived from fear of death, and only afterwards an entity which was not I came to constitute you. At that time people did not have an awareness of fearing oneself, knowledge of the self came from an other and was affirmed by possessing and being possessed, and by conquering and being conquered. He, the third person who is not directly relevant to I and you, was gradually differentiated. After this the I also discovered that he was to be found in large numbers everywhere and was a separate existence from oneself, and it was only then that the consciousness of you and I became secondary. In the individual’s struggle for survival amongst others, the self was gradually forgotten and gradually churned like a grain of sand into the chaos of the boundless universe.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“ضحايا الظلم هم دائما من النساء”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“Reality is myself, reality is only the perception of this instant and it can’t be related to another person.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“Tuzağa yakalanmış hissediyorum kendimi. Dev bir zıpkınla vurulmuş, korkunun ağları içinde çırpınan bir balık gibiyim; kaderini değiştiremeyeceğini bile bile çırpınan, bir mucize olmadıkça kurtulmayacağını bilen bir balık. Ama ben hayatın boyunca hep bir mucize beklemedim mi?”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“But your childhood no longer exists, and all that confront you are the dark shadows of the mountain”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“你後悔你沒同她約定再見，你後悔你沒有跟蹤她，你後悔你沒有勇氣，沒有去糾纏住她，沒有那種浪漫的激情，沒有妄想，也就不會有豔遇。總之，你後悔你的失誤，你難得失眠，但你竟然一夜沒有睡好。早起，你又覺得荒唐，幸虧沒有莽撞。那種唐突有損你的自尊，可你又討厭你過於清醒。你都不會去愛，軟弱得失去了男子的氣概，你已經失去了行動的能力。”
― Gao Xingjian, 靈山

“The story can also serve as a philosophy for getting on in society – to teach the morally superior man that each day he should investigate his own personal conduct, or that human life is suffering, or that suffering in life derives from the self. Or the story could be developed into numerous intricate and complex theories. It all depends on how the storyteller tells it.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“The young men are even less inhibited and come right up to the women to choose the one they like best, as if they are choosing a piece of fruit. At this point the women move their handkerchiefs and fans, and the more they are examined the more feeling they put into their singing. When a conversation starts, the young man takes the woman’s hand and they walk off together. The marketplace with its stalls thronging with ten thousand heads during the daytime is now a vast singing stadium. I am suddenly surrounded by an expanse of passions and think that the human search for love must originally have been like this. So-called civilization in later ages separated sexual impulse from love and created the concepts of status, wealth, religion, ethics and cultural responsibility. Such is the stupidity of human beings.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“Thus Buddha told the boddhisatva: the myriad phenomena are vanity, the absence of phenomena is also vanity.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“This creature known as man is of course highly intelligent, he’s capable of manufacturing almost anything from rumours to test-tube babies and yet he destroys two to three species every day. This is the absurdity of man.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“Life is not the same as manifestations of life. Real life, or in other words the basic substance of life, should be the former and not the latter. I had gone against real life because I was simply stringing together life’s manifestations, so of course I wasn’t able to accurately portray life and in the end only succeeded in distorting reality.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“Sự thật không thể vui tai, vừa lòng, sự thật ít nhiều vẫn buộc phải có phần gay gắt, nếu không thế thì sao mà nhìn được thẳng vào vận mệnh của bản thân cơ chứ!”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“I come out of the home for the aged, get on my bicycle, and think to myself that even if there is a communal grave it will in future not be of archaeological significance. Nevertheless, I have finally visited my deceased maternal grandmother who once bought me a spinning top.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

“I say it's impossible to understand the world.
He says he's talking about this half-bird half-fish creature, not about the world.
I say there's no difference between this half-bird half-fish creature and the world.”
― Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain