82 Quotes by Mo Yan

I am also well aware that literature only has a minimal influence on political disputes or economic crises in the world, but its significance to human beings is ancient.

Possibly because I've lived so much of my life in difficult circumstances, I think I have a more profound understanding of life.

Where there’s life, death is inevitable. Dying’s easy; it’s living that’s hard. The harder it gets, the stronger the will to live. And the greater the fear of death, the greater the struggle to keep on living.

During breaks out in the field, when our grumbling stomachs sent a sour taste up into our mouths, our greatest entertainment was talking among ourselves about food. We, along with some of the other field hands, would trade descriptions of delicious foods we had eaten or heard about. It was truly food for the soul. The speakers would invariably have us all drooling.

A person can change the way he talks, but not the way he sneezes. A person can turn single-fold eyelids into double folds, but the greatest plastic surgeon alive cannot change the look in a man’s eyes.

My works are Chinese literature, which is part of world literature. They show the life of Chinese people as well as the country’s unique culture and folk customs.

A stable, peaceful society is the training ground for humanity, just as caged animals, removed from the violent unpredictability of the wild, are influenced by the behaviour of their captors in time.

When someone forces me to do something I don’t do it.

Possibly because I’ve lived so much of my life in difficult circumstances, I think I have a more profound understanding of life.