Xinran Quotes

Writing is a kind of repository and can help create a space for the accommodation of new thoughts and feelings. If you don't write these stories down, your heart will be filled up and broken by them.

No one likes crying, but tears water our souls.

(As a "grandchild of a capitalist household"
At school, I was forbidden to take singing and dancing lessons with the other girls because I was not to "pollute" the arena of the revolution. Even though I was short-sighted, I was not allowed to sit in the front row in class because the best places were reserved for the children born to peasants, workers or soldiers; they were deemed to have 'straight roots and red shoots'. Similarly, I was forbidden to stand in the front row during PE lessons, though I was the smallest in the class, because the place nearest the teacher were for the 'next generation of the revolution'.

When you walk into your memories, you are opening a door to the past; the road within has many branches, and the route is different every time.

(While interviewing at the Hunan women's prison
'I have lived with several men, and let them amuse themselves with me. Because of that, I have been sent to two labour reeducation camps and been sentenced to prison twice. ( ... ) When people curse me for having no shame, I don't get angry. All the Chinese care about is "face", but they don't understand how their faces are linked to the rest of their bodies.

No matter how revolutionary people were, he said, they could not live without books. Without books, we would not understand the world; without books, we could not develop; without books, nature could not serve humanity.

No one like crying, but tears water our souls. So, perhaps my thanks should be to allow you to cry for the Chinese women in my books ...

The more you read, the more you want to know, and so the more questions you have.

Just as books are read one word at a time, roads are taken one step at a time.