A Lover's Discourse Quotes

“Once love is brought down to earth, and weighed, it's over, it's dead. – But don't you agree that real love is the love that's brought down to earth? It's only real when it's mixed up with dirt and sweat. Otherwise, it's just for puppies and adolescents!”
― Xiaolu Guo, A Lover's Discourse

“Originality is a fetish of the people who want to control the art market and the publishing industry.
It’s also a fetich of academics, particularly the males and the old farts.
What I was really interested in was the sweating workers in the Chinese villages. It was their lives, their anonymity, their way of looking at western classics, and their purely pragmatic attitude.
I love being with those artisans and feeling their energy and their lack of self consciousness. They were not precise in any way about their works, or about their life, but they were full of heart. And at the same time they were not clinging to their achievements. They are part of the flow of life. I have come from the same culture, but I feel I cannot make this clear, or make westerners understand. The western language and mentality did not allow me to do it.
I feel I could do that in England but not here in America, where I feel I’m second class citizen not because people don’t understand Chinese culture (there are so many of us), but even after they understood it, they still decided to think we are second class citizen.”
― Xiaolu Guo, A Lover's Discourse

“It was the same feeling I had when I first got to Britain. How many times could one restart a life?
“I read that in China, people will transplant large number of trees and bring them to the newly developed cities. Chinese people seem to be very adaptable, like the trees.” You were trying to comfort me.
“Yes, but once the trees grew older, you can’t transplant them again. The roots are too embedded into the ground.”
― Xiaolu Guo, A Lover's Discourse

“Yes, there is nothing objective about how you feel about stars or planets. It’s all literature. People put too much feeling and emotion into these things.”
― Xiaolu Guo, A Lover's Discourse: A Novel

“I looked at Internet images of those ice-age lakes in and around Berlin, and their strange German names: Schlachtensee, Wannsee, Müggelsee, Plötzensee. So they call their lake see (sea). And they call their sea meer. Curiously non-English, I thought. This was of course obvious. German is different from English. But still, I realised, I was encountering a third language. This was very different from learning English, because English was always in the atmosphere like pollen from the plants permeating the air, whereas German was like a specific mountain in the landscape which you had to have a particular ambition to climb.”
― Xiaolu Guo, A Lover's Discourse: A Novel

“What do you mean by wu-wo?' you asked.
'It's like no self. No I. Non-existence,' I answered. 'My body is here, but I don't feel I am here, right now. I don't feel my existence in this environment.”
― Xiaolu Guo, A Lover's Discourse

“It’s very interesting to see her so not afraid of admitting she thinks being Chinese is forever being a second class citizen in a western country, while so not feeling ashamed and feeling it’s okay to write it in a book and educate the Brits on Chinese culture.
I feel I could do that in England but not here in America, where I feel I’m second class citizen not because people don’t understand Chinese culture (there are so many of us), but even after they understood it, they still decided to think we are second class citizen.”
― Xiaolu Guo, A Lover's Discourse