Yu Hua Quotes

“So things remained until one day, many years later, I happened upon a line in a poem by Heine: “Death is the cooling night.” That childhood memory, lost for so long, suddenly restored itself to my quivering heart, returning freshly washed, in limpid clarity, never again to leave me. If literature truly possesses a mysterious power, I think perhaps it is precisely this: that one can read a book by a writer of a different time, a different country, a different race, a different language, and a different culture and there encounter a sensation that is one’s very own. Heine put into words the feeling I had as a child when I lay napping in the morgue. And that, I tell myself, is literature.”

“So things remained until one day, many years later, I happened upon a line in a poem by Heine: “Death is the cooling night.” That childhood memory, lost for so long, suddenly restored itself to my quivering heart, returning freshly washed, in limpid clarity, never again to leave me. If literature truly possesses a mysterious power, I think perhaps it is precisely this: that one can read a book by a writer of a different time, a different country, a different race, a different language, and a different culture and there encounter a sensation that is one’s very own. Heine put into words the feeling I had as a child when I lay napping in the morgue. And that, I tell myself, is literature.”

“Future is mobile computing - smartphones and tablets are just elements of it. The industry is on the verge of a whole new paradigm.”

“Music played at weddings always reminds me of the music played for soldiers before they go into battle.”

“If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world.”

“God will forgive me. It's his job.”

“Human misery is too great for men to do without faith.”

“Experience is a good school. But the fees are high.”

“Of course God will forgive me that's His job.”

“I will not say that women have no character; rather, they have a new one every day.”

“Every man, either to his terror or consolation, has some sense of religion.”