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Quote by Eileen Chang

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Lust, Caution and Other Stories

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Author

Eileen Chang
Eileen Chang

Eileen Chang, born on September 30, 1920, in Shanghai, and died on September 8, 1995, was a renowned Chinese modern writer. Her works are characterized by their unique perspective and profound social insight, with representative works including 'The Golden Lock' and 'Love in a Fallen City'. Eileen Chang's literary achievements and influence are profound, and she is hailed as a 'unique flower in the history of Chinese modern literature'. more

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“It's obvious that at such times reading represented for me something like the center of reality; the rest seemed to me freaks of nature . . . hallucinations perhaps would be more appropriate. Since that other world was one in which I was unhappy, I didn't pay it much heed. It was this kind of thinking that was responsible for my idealistic bent. It stems from my conviction that reality can be learned from words, and I remained convinced for at least thirty years that a book offered you a kind of truth, a truth difficult to seize, even a metaphysical truth, and that it revealed secrets about various things. I remember that when I was seventeen or so I read Dostoevsky, and I had the distinct impression that he was offering me a secret. I wasn't quite sure what it was, but a secret nonetheless that transcended not only ordinary knowledge but also scientific knowledge, something slightly mysterious. And that kind of thinking remained with me for a long time, until finally I realized that literature was only one more human activity among many others, and as such it did not reveal any secret: what it does is no more or no less than record the full scope of how a particular period in history views the world and its people. But it took me a long time to see that. And at the time I'm referring to—when I was fifteen or so, and then later on during my last year before the baccalaureate—I was in the process of contracting what I was later to call my neurosis, that is, the notion that since reality had been given to me through books, I would make contact with reality, and offer a more profound truth about the world, if I wrote books myself. The idea was the discovery, the thing one reveals, and it certainly derived from all the elements I have just mentioned.”

WritingRealityTruthReadingIdealismDostoevsky
Book:Sartre by himself: A film directed by Alexandre Astruc and Michel Contat with the participation of Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques-Larent Bost, Andre Gorz, Jean Pouillon
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“There was a bill that he would pay with a real two shilling piece, and it was real, all real, he assured himself, fingering the coin in his pocket, real to everyone except to him and to her; even to him it began to seem real; and then–but it was too exciting to stand and think any longer, and he pulled the parasol out of the earth with a jerk and was impatient to find the place where one had tea with other people, like other people.”

RealityDreamsInventionRomanticism
Book:Kew Gardens
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“Through the media, we’ve established this standard of what every human being should look up to: somebody who always looks right; who always has the right light on their face; never has bags under their eyes; never says anything inappropriate. Somebody who always somehow turns out perfect. I hate the fact that celebrities are supposedly a higher class of human being. That’s the way I felt growing up, and that’s the way I think a lot of people feel. So now that I’m in this position, I want to change things. I want to be like the patron saint of reality.”

RealityMediaCelebrityPatron Saint
Author:Fiona Apple
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