69 Quotes by Yiyun Li

Once in a while I get an email from someone I have met briefly. "You may not remember me," these emails often begin, the hope to be remembered expressed by the acceptance of having already been forgotten.

A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.

The weak-minded choose to hate," she said. "It's the least painful thing to do, isn't it?

Sadness is a helpless garrison against the blindness of tragedy.

There is a difference between being remembered and being caught by the mesh of one's mind.

If a person is not living for others, it does not mean he knows how to live for himself. One prefers anyone - a mother, a lover, a friend - who knows how to live for herself. Such knowledge is not selfishness.

I have spent much of my life turning away from the scripts given to me, in China and in America; my refusal to be defined by the will of others is my one and only political statement.

She wonders if this is what people call falling in love, the desire to be with someone for every minute of the rest of her life so strong that sometimes she is frightened of herself.

This need for recognition and glory must have its roots in human loneliness.