10 Quotes & Sayings By Ma Jian

Ma Jian is a contemporary Chinese novelist and critic. He was born in 1951 in a small town in Henan province. He studied at Beijing University, where he received a PhD in literature, and taught there until the end of the Cultural Revolution. His novel, The Garlic Ballads , published in 1981, won the China Writers' Association Literary Award that year Read more

Since then, he has published many novels and other works of fiction that have been translated into many languages around the world. He lives in Beijing with his wife and two children.

1
Everything I was I carry with me, everything I will be lies waiting on the road ahead. Ma Jian
2
I left Beijing because I wanted to be alone and to forge my own path, but I know now that no path is solitary, we all tread across other people's beginnings and ends. Ma Jian
3
Before the sparrow arrived, you had almost stopped thinking about flight. Then, last winter, it soared through the sky and landed in front of you, or more precisely on the windowsill of the covered balcony adjoining your bedroom. You knew the grimy window panes were caked with dead ants and dust, and smelt as sour as the curtains. But the sparrow wasn’t put off. It jumped inside the covered balcony and ruffled its feathers, releasing a sweet smell of tree bark into the air. Then it flew into your bedroom, landed on your chest and stayed there like a cold egg. Ma Jian
4
I don't know where I am going, I just know I had to leave. Everything I was I carry with me, everything I will be lies waiting on the road ahead. Ma Jian
5
Before the counter-culture revolutionary Li Lian was executed in 1971 for criticising the Cultural Revolution, pour policemen pushed her face against the window of a truck, lifted her shirt and cut out her kidneys with a surgical knife, ’ Mau Sen said, his face stony and white. ‘I think that removing the organs of convicts while they are still alive is too much. It completely contravenes medical ethics.’ ‘This is a dissection class, not a political meeting, ’ Sun Chunlin said. Ma Jian
6
Beauty can make a woman rich, but if she relies solely on her looks to get by, she'll always remain under a man's thumb. Ma Jian
7
Whatever China I'd been born into, I would probably still have become a painter - I loved sketching portraits as a child, and began art classes at the age 7. But if China hadn't been under Maoist rule, I might never have become a writer. Ma Jian
8
When history is erased, people's moral values are also erased. Ma Jian
9
To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons. Ma Jian