BA JIN

My pen is alight and my body aflame. Until both burn down to ash, my love and my hate will remain here in the world.

Victory is for them, not for us. We have not made profit out of our country's misfortune. Victory does not bring us luck.

You have your thoughts and I have mine. This is the fact and you can't change it even if you kill me.

I believe in the future a new Dante will write a new Divine Comedy.

Only by not forgetting the past can we be the master of the future.

Before my eyes are many miserable scenes, the suffering of others and myself forces my hands to move. I become a machine for writing.

Loving truth and living honestly is my attitude to life. Be true to yourself and be true to others, thus you can be the judge of your behavior.

I write just because the fire of my emotion is burning. Had I not, I would not have been able to find peace.

I am a person always full of contradictions... It was hard to choose whether to devote myself to revolution as a soldier or as a writer.

I've lived on royalties all my life. It is the readers who have supported me.

You have your thoughts and I have mine. This is the fact and you can't change it even if you kill me.

Only by not forgetting the past can we be the master of the future.

My pen is alight and my body aflame. Until both burn down to ash, my love and my hate will remain here in the world.

Victory is for them, not for us. We have not made profit out of our country's misfortune. Victory does not bring us luck.

I am a person always full of contradictions... It was hard to choose whether to devote myself to revolution as a soldier or as a writer.

I've lived on royalties all my life. It is the readers who have supported me.

I write just because the fire of my emotion is burning. Had I not, I would not have been able to find peace.

Nobody would say the cowshed was heaven and nobody would say the inhuman torture of so many victims be called a revolution of the proletariat. ... A museum should be established to remind China of the follies and disasters that had fallen from 1966 to 1976. We cannot forget what had happened and history should not repeat itself.

Loving truth and living honestly is my attitude to life. Be true to yourself and be true to others, thus you can be the judge of your behavior.

I have spent myself on all kinds of things ... I have advanced much politically but I have written little and moreover have written it badly.

I believe in the future a new Dante will write a new Divine Comedy.

Before my eyes are many miserable scenes, the suffering of others and myself forces my hands to move. I become a machine for writing.