Sijie Dai Quotes

#1. Mozart is thinking of Chairman Mao

Dai Sijie

#2. In the end we had changed the position of the hands so many times that we had no idea what the time really was.

Dai Sijie

#3. I was carried away, swept along by the mighty stream of words pouring from the hundreds of pages. To me it was the ultimate book: once you had read it, neither your own life nor the world you lived in would ever look the same.

Dai Sijie

#4. One should not forget the sins of their forebears, but nor can one advance by paying witness only to the failings of the past. To bury the past is to progress, and only in breaking the chains that bind can you escape the prison your predecessors have laid.

Scott Warren

#5. It would evidently take more than a political regime, more than dire poverty to stop a woman from wanting to be well-dressed: it was a desire as old as the world, as old as the desire for children.

Dai Sijie

#6. By the time we arrived the film had already started, and there was only standing room left behind the screen, where everything was in reverse and everyone was left-handed.

Dai Sijie

#7. Our souls yearn for connection with all souls. There are people we think we prefer and others we don't, but half the time that's a lie: We tell ourselves the fairy tale of our hatreds out of fear, but we revisit that tale as it suits us. Deep down, we'd love to love and be loved by all.

Alexandra Katehakis

#8. In Chinese love stories the one who loves always starts by borrowing a book from the beloved.

Dai Sijie

#9. I couldn't care less about what anybody else has to say.

Victor Cruz

#10. Calligraphy may well be simply an artistic version of another form, that is the ideograms which make up the poem, but then not only does it reflect the character and temperament of the artist but ... also betrays his heart rate, his breathing.

Dai Sijie

#11. I kept my door more securely locked than ever and passed the time with foreign novels. Since Balzac was Luo's favourite I put him to one side, and with the ardour and earnestness of my eighteen years I fell in love with one author after another: Flaubert, Gogol, Melville, and even Romain Rolland.

Dai Sijie

#12. We had been so unlucky. By the time we had finally learnt to read properly, there had been nothing left for us to read.

Dai Sijie

#13. Personally, I liked working for the university. They gave us money and facilities. We didn't have to produce anything. You've never been out of college. You don't know what it's like out there! I've worked in the private sector ... they expect results!

Dan Aykroyd

#14. Our imagination is dictated by who we are. (198)

Dai Sijie

#15. Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb.

Jean Arp

#16. A name with a gently exotic ring to it, like birdsong, like a grain of sand in the far-off Gobi Desert or the northern steppes, whipped up by the wind, carried by storms, swirling through the sky, travelling, crossing whole countries without knowing quite how, and ending up in the crook of my ear.

Dai Sijie

#17. She said she had learnt one thing from Balzac: that a woman's beauty is a treasure beyond price.

Dai Sijie

#18. Photographs open doors into the past, but they also alloq a look into the future

Sally Mann

#19. You only have one first chance to make one first impression that lasts a lifetime.

Nas