Ma Jian Quotes

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Ma Jian

Profession : Writer

Birth : August 18, 1953

I meant that the Chinese people are not aware of their own entrapment. They believe they live in a free society, but don't realize how much they are being monitored and controlled, how much the information they receive is restricted and warped, until they step out of line, that is, and feel the heavy hand of the state fall on them.

Ma Jian

In 1989, I was on Tiananmen Square with the students, living in their makeshift tents and joining their jubilant singing of the Internationale. In the two decades since, each time that I have gone back, visions from those days seem to return with increasing persistence.

Ma Jian

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

Only when you are aware of the uniqueness of everyone's individual body will you begin to have a sense of your own self-worth.

Ma Jian

I am trying to persuade my family to spend more time in China. It's no fun to be in exile. I can't even figure out the basic 26 letters, let alone operate, in English. I often feel that although I've found the sky of freedom above my head, I've lost the soil I stand on. I need to be back in my motherland, where I can find inspirations.

Ma Jian

While I was writing 'Stick Out Your Tongue' in Beijing, the police began knocking on my door again. As soon as I finished the book, I moved to Hong Kong so that I could work undisturbed on my next novel.

Ma Jian

When people are poor, they find ways of making things taste like fish.

Ma Jian

After the Tiananmen Massacre, I felt compelled not only to continue writing but to actively resist the restrictions placed on freedom of speech. I set up the publishing company in Hong Kong, with offices in Shenzhen in mainland China, and managed to publish works of fiction, philosophy, and politics by unapproved authors.

Ma Jian

I believe that the power of literature is stronger than the power of tyranny.

Ma Jian

On the face of it, China has won the Olympics. But it is not China that has won, but the Communist party. The Chinese people have lost.

Ma Jian

Living in London is like being on a luxury cruise liner.

Ma Jian

Red Dust was about the late 1980s; it was a time of burgeoning hopes and opening up and people searching for new ways.

Ma Jian

I wanted to analyse and understand how the Chinese people could have their lives so crushed by fear.

Ma Jian

China is completely lacking in self-awareness and as someone who has stepped outside that society, I have a responsibility to write about it as I see it.

Ma Jian

I left Beijing in 1987, shortly before my books were banned there, but have returned continually.

Ma Jian

In February of this year I returned to China to research my next book. The authorities know about the novels of mine that have been published in the west, including the latest one, Beijing Coma, about a student shot in Tiananmen Square, but so far have allowed me to return.

Ma Jian

Beijing Coma took me 10 years to finish.

Ma Jian

Tyrannies not only want to control your mind and thoughts but your flesh as well.

Ma Jian

It is vitally important for me, both personally and for my writing, to be able to return to China freely, so being barred entry has caused me deep concern and distress.

Ma Jian

My hope is that the Chinese government will come to realise that it is futile to repress free speech, and that contrary to what they believe a regime's strength rests not its suppression of a plurality of opinions and ideas, but in its capacity and willingness to encourage them.

Ma Jian