Dai Sijie Quotes

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

Dai Sijie

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

Dai Sijie

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

Dai Sijie

Is there just one single love in a lifetime? Are all our lovers ― from the first to the last, including the most fleeting ― part of that unique love, and is each of them merely an expression of it, a variation, a particular version? In the same way that in literature there is just one true masterpiece to which different writers give a particular form (taking the twentieth century alone: Joyce, who explores everything happening inside his character;s head with microscopic precision; Proust, for whom the present is merely a memory of the past; Kafka, who drifts on the margins between dream and reality; the blind Borges, probably the one I relate to best, etc).

Dai Sijie

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