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Top 70 Yiyun Li Quotes (2026 Update)
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Yiyun Li Quote: “The real story was beyond our ability to tell: our girlhood, our friendship, our love – all monumental, all inconsequential. The world had no place for two girls like us, though I was slow then, not knowing that Fabienne, slighted, thwarted, even fatally wounded, tried to make a fool of that world, on her and on my behalf. Revenge is a story that often begins with more promises than the ending can offer.”

51. “The real story was beyond our ability to tell: our girlhood, our friendship, our love – all monumental, all inconsequential. The world had no place for two girls like us, though I was slow then, not knowing that Fabienne, slighted, thwarted, even fatally wounded, tried to make a fool of that world, on her and on my behalf. Revenge is a story that often begins with more promises than the ending can offer.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “Not knowing is okay, he had once said, but pretending to know is not.”

52. “Not knowing is okay, he had once said, but pretending to know is not.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “Time corrupts. And we pay a price for everything corruptible: food, roof beams, souls.”

53. “Time corrupts. And we pay a price for everything corruptible: food, roof beams, souls.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “Dreams are but prologue to days, epilogue to other days, written by our faltering minds.”

54. “Dreams are but prologue to days, epilogue to other days, written by our faltering minds.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “A real person, open-ended, can only be approached as a hypothesis. A character in fiction is demanded to be accountable. Some characters are more willing to offer a context. The young women in Jane Austen’s novels, for instance, seek happiness and suffer when happiness is made unavailable, by situation, chance, or folly.”

55. “A real person, open-ended, can only be approached as a hypothesis. A character in fiction is demanded to be accountable. Some characters are more willing to offer a context. The young women in Jane Austen’s novels, for instance, seek happiness and suffer when happiness is made unavailable, by situation, chance, or folly.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “The unspeakable is a wound that stays open always, always, and forever.”

56. “The unspeakable is a wound that stays open always, always, and forever.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “Few of us would make a fool of ourselves in pressing the animals to give us serious answers about their lives, but we do that all the time to other people.”

57. “Few of us would make a fool of ourselves in pressing the animals to give us serious answers about their lives, but we do that all the time to other people.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “There is a difference between being remembered and being caught by the mesh of one’s mind.”

58. “There is a difference between being remembered and being caught by the mesh of one’s mind.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “People often forget that it is always a gamble to be a mother; I am not a gambler.”

59. “People often forget that it is always a gamble to be a mother; I am not a gambler.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “How do I measure Fabienne’s presence in my life – by the years we were together, or by the years we have been apart, her shadow elongating as time goes by, always touching me?”

60. “How do I measure Fabienne’s presence in my life – by the years we were together, or by the years we have been apart, her shadow elongating as time goes by, always touching me?”

Yiyun Li Quote: “I wished that life could be reset, but reset from when?”

61. “I wished that life could be reset, but reset from when?”

Yiyun Li Quote: “Perhaps I was born a material different from my parents. I was born a hard person, harder than most people in my life, so I have only myself to blame when I cannot feel the love of others, my parents among them. Love from those who cannot damage us irreparably often feels insufficient; we may think, rightly or wrongly, that their love does not matter at all.”

62. “Perhaps I was born a material different from my parents. I was born a hard person, harder than most people in my life, so I have only myself to blame when I cannot feel the love of others, my parents among them. Love from those who cannot damage us irreparably often feels insufficient; we may think, rightly or wrongly, that their love does not matter at all.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “What a tragedy that would have been, living an interchangeable life, looking for interchangeable excitements.”

63. “What a tragedy that would have been, living an interchangeable life, looking for interchangeable excitements.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “Being known, then, must not be far from being imprisoned by someone else’s thought.”

64. “Being known, then, must not be far from being imprisoned by someone else’s thought.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “Never feel that you’re obliged to show your pain to the world,” she said. “Very few people deserve to see your tears.”

65. “Never feel that you’re obliged to show your pain to the world,” she said. “Very few people deserve to see your tears.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “It seemed to me that to honor the sensitivity and peculiarity of my children – so that each could have as much space as possible to grow into his individual self – was the best I could do as a mother. Yes, I loved them, and I still love them, but more important than loving is understanding and respecting them, and this includes, more than anything else, understanding and respecting their choices to end their lives.”

66. “It seemed to me that to honor the sensitivity and peculiarity of my children – so that each could have as much space as possible to grow into his individual self – was the best I could do as a mother. Yes, I loved them, and I still love them, but more important than loving is understanding and respecting them, and this includes, more than anything else, understanding and respecting their choices to end their lives.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “A year is a year anywhere, a day is a day for everyone, and yet with a few tricks these archivists make others believe that they have packed something into their days, something precious, enviable, everlasting, that is not available to everyone.”

67. “A year is a year anywhere, a day is a day for everyone, and yet with a few tricks these archivists make others believe that they have packed something into their days, something precious, enviable, everlasting, that is not available to everyone.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “Wishing only wounds the heart.”

68. “Wishing only wounds the heart.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “I don’t want an end point to my sorrow. The death of a child is not a heat wave or a snowstorm, nor an obstacle race to rush through and win, nor an acute or chronic illness to recover from. What is grief but a word, a shortcut, a simplification of something much larger than that word?”

69. “I don’t want an end point to my sorrow. The death of a child is not a heat wave or a snowstorm, nor an obstacle race to rush through and win, nor an acute or chronic illness to recover from. What is grief but a word, a shortcut, a simplification of something much larger than that word?”

Yiyun Li Quote: “People talk about grief coming and going like waves, but I am not a breakwater, I am not a boat, I am not a statue left on a rocky shore, tested for its endurance.”

70. “People talk about grief coming and going like waves, but I am not a breakwater, I am not a boat, I am not a statue left on a rocky shore, tested for its endurance.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “There is no real salvation from one’s own life; books, however, off the approximation of it.”

71. “There is no real salvation from one’s own life; books, however, off the approximation of it.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “A story has to be written out. How else do we get our revenge?”

72. “A story has to be written out. How else do we get our revenge?”

Yiyun Li Quote: “Love from those who cannot damage us irreparably often feels insufficient; we may think, rightly or wrongly, that their love does not matter at all.”

73. “Love from those who cannot damage us irreparably often feels insufficient; we may think, rightly or wrongly, that their love does not matter at all.”

Yiyun Li Quote: “Reading, however, is a kind of private freedom: out of time, out of place.”

74. “Reading, however, is a kind of private freedom: out of time, out of place.”

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