Top 50 Mo Yan Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Where there’s life, death is inevitable. Dying’s easy; it’s living that’s hard. The harder it gets, the stronger the will to live. And the greater the fear of death, the greater the struggle to keep on living.”

— Mo Yan

2. “People who are strangers to liquor are incapable of talking about literature.”

— Mo Yan

3. “When literature exists, perhaps we do not notice how important it is, but when it does not exist, our lives become coarsened and brutal. For this reason, I am proud of my profession, but also aware of its importance.”

— Mo Yan

4. “When someone forces me to do something I don’t do it.”

— Mo Yan

5. “My works are Chinese literature, which is part of world literature. They show the life of Chinese people as well as the country’s unique culture and folk customs.”

— Mo Yan

6. “A writer should bury his thoughts deep and convey them through the characters in his novel.”

— Mo Yan

7. “A writer should always bravely face life, risking death and mutilation in order to dethrone an emperor.”

— Mo Yan

8. “Wind, then rain, and then the blue sky.”

— Mo Yan

9. “Loneliness and hunger were my fortunes of creation.”

— Mo Yan

10. “A person can change the way he talks, but not the way he sneezes. A person can turn single-fold eyelids into double folds, but the greatest plastic surgeon alive cannot change the look in a man’s eyes.”

— Mo Yan

11. “A writer writes what he knows, in ways that are natural to him.”

— Mo Yan

12. “I write about my region, the countryside in which I grew up.”

— Mo Yan

13. “I have always been independent.”

— Mo Yan

14. “I heard so many stories from Gaomi’s peasants that I had an irrepressible urge to write them down. Today, Gaomi’s peasants know that they have become famous around the world through my writings, but I think they are a little puzzled by this.”

— Mo Yan

15. “No person writes to win awards.”

— Mo Yan

16. “A writer should express criticism and indignation at the dark side of society and the ugliness of human nature, but we should not use one uniform expression.”

— Mo Yan

17. “Heavens never seals off all the exits.”

— Mo Yan

18. “If an earthworm in the ground won’t starve to death, then neither will we, the working class.” He.”

— Mo Yan

19. “My grandmother once told me that while there is no suffering a person cannot endure, there is plenty of good fortune one can never hope to enjoy. I believe that.”

— Mo Yan

20. “The young must not scoff at the old, for flowers don’t bloom forever.”

— Mo Yan

21. “He who steals hooks is a thief. He who robs a nation is a nobleman.”

— Mo Yan

22. “During breaks out in the field, when our grumbling stomachs sent a sour taste up into our mouths, our greatest entertainment was talking among ourselves about food. We, along with some of the other field hands, would trade descriptions of delicious foods we had eaten or heard about. It was truly food for the soul. The speakers would invariably have us all drooling.”

— Mo Yan

23. “Are women really wonderful things? Maybe they are. Yes, women are wonderful things, but when all is said and done, they aren’t really “things.”

— Mo Yan

24. “Possibly because I’ve lived so much of my life in difficult circumstances, I think I have a more profound understanding of life.”

— Mo Yan

25. “Always choose life. A demeaned life is better than the best death.”

— Mo Yan

26. “One of the biggest problems in literature is the lack of subtlety.”

— Mo Yan

27. “Strong winds eventually cease, unhappy families return to peace.”

— Mo Yan

28. “We’re already too late, so there’s no need to go any faster.”

— Mo Yan

29. “A stable, peaceful society is the training ground for humanity, just as caged animals, removed from the violent unpredictability of the wild, are influenced by the behaviour of their captors in time.”

— Mo Yan

30. “When I write, I try to represent the ordinary person in the pew, which means that, ironically, I’m qualified to write about prayer by being unqualified!”

— Mo Yan

31. “Surrounded by progress, I feel a nagging sense of our species’ regression.”

— Mo Yan

32. “I have nothing but admiration for myself as a youngster; I was a force to be reckoned with then, a much finer specimen than I am now. As kids, we had little meat on our bones; we were sticklike figures with big rounded bellies, the skin stretched so taut it was nearly transparent – you could just about see our intestines twist and coil on the other side. Our necks were so long and thin it was a miracle they could support our heavy heads.”

— Mo Yan

33. “The act of giving voice to this spiritual suffering is, in my view, the sacred duty of the writer.”

— Mo Yan

34. “Prosperity and comfort are what people seek, but the costs to character are often terrifying.”

— Mo Yan

35. “I’d discovered that the range of beauty in breasts is wide; while one should never lightly say that a pair is ugly, one can easily say that a pair of breasts is beautiful. Hedgehogs are beautiful sometimes; so are baby pigs.”

— Mo Yan

36. “I’ll continue on the path I’ve been taking, feet on the ground, describing people’s lives, describing people’s emotions, writing from the standpoint of the ordinary people.”

— Mo Yan

37. “Some may want to shout on the street, but we should tolerate those who hide in their rooms and use literature to voice their opinions.”

— Mo Yan

38. “I think that China has many outstanding authors, and their great works should also be recognised by the world.”

— Mo Yan

39. “Finally, she mused that human existence is as brief as the life of autumn grass, so what was there to fear from taking chances with your life?”

— Mo Yan

40. “For a country boy, poor as I was, whose constant worry was to be able to have enough to eat, the Army guaranteed one’s survival.”

— Mo Yan

41. “I am also well aware that literature only has a minimal influence on political disputes or economic crises in the world, but its significance to human beings is ancient.”

— Mo Yan

42. “Don’t swallow a scythe if your stomach isn’t curved.”

— Mo Yan

43. “There are times when everything on earth spits out the stench of human blood.”

— Mo Yan

44. “Only by recalling a dream is an insomniac sure he’s slept.”

— Mo Yan

45. “As a child who grew up in a grassy field, enjoying little formal education, I know virtually nothing about literary theories and have had to rely solely upon my own experiences and intuitive understanding of the world to write.”

— Mo Yan

46. “When people are driven nearly mad, they are imbued with superhuman strength and are capable of almost supernatural deeds.”

— Mo Yan

47. “A writer’s place in a nation’s literary history cannot be judged by whether or not he is capable of writing a book as heavy as a brick. That must rest on his contributions to the development and enrichment of that nation’s language.”

— Mo Yan

48. “Glory, causes, careers, and love mean nothing on an empty stomach. Because of food, I lost my self-respect; because of food, I suffered the humiliation of a lowly cur; and because of food I took up creative writing, with a vengeance.”

— Mo Yan

49. “In some significant aspects, heroes are born, not made. Heroic qualities flow through a person’s veins like an undercurrent, ready to be translated into action.”

— Mo Yan

50. “How do you know Spotted Neck has a big spot on his neck?”

— Mo Yan