3 Quotes & Sayings By Wu Mingyi

Wu Ming-Yi is a writer of Chinese descent who has lived most of his life in the United States. His work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, Harper's Magazine, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, Vogue, GQ and Salon. A graduate of Stanford University with a degree in Comparative Literature and Theater Arts with a minor in Creative Writing, he has worked for more than twenty years as an editor at the San Francisco Review of Books. He also teaches at Stanford University's Creative Writing Program.

1
In all honesty, I don’t envy you the possession of this power over memory, nor do I admire you. Because humans are usually completely unconcerned with the memories of other creatures. Human existence involves the willful destruction of the existential memories of other creatures and of your own memories as well. No life can survive without other lives, with the ecological memories of other living creatures have, memories of the environments in which the live. People don’t realize they need to rely on the memories of other organisms to survive. You think that flowers bloom in colorful profusion just to please your eyes. That a wild boar exists just to provide meat for your table. That a fish takes the bait just for you sake. That only you can mourn. That a stone falling into a gorge is of no significance. That a sambar deer, its head bent low to sip at a creek is not a revelation . When in fact the finest movement of any organism represents a change in an ecosystem.” The man with the compound eyes takes a deep sign and says: “But if you were any different you wouldn’t be human. . Wu MingYi
2
Recently I keep thinking that this isn’t about the survival of a species. It’s about why we’re never satisfied with what we need, why we always take a bit more. Wu MingYi