Daily Inspiration Quote by Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian’s line is a quiet manifesto disguised as craft advice: if you want literature that isn’t propaganda, therapy, or fashion, start with looking - outward at “humans,” inward at “oneself” - until the haze clears. “Clear-minded” is doing the heavy lifting. It hints at a hard-won sobriety, the refusal to let ideology, group feeling, or even personal vanity write the book for you. Coming from a novelist shaped by the Cultural Revolution and later exile, the phrase reads like a survival tactic: when public language is contaminated, the most radical act is to return to the evidence of lived behavior and private consciousness.

The symmetry matters. Gao doesn’t crown self-knowledge as superior, nor does he romanticize sociological observation. He insists on a double exposure: the self is another human to study, and other humans are mirrors that disturb your self-story. That keeps literature from collapsing into confession (where the world becomes a prop) or reportage (where the writer pretends to be unimplicated). “Starting point” also signals modesty about what art can claim. He’s not promising moral authority or final truth, just a workable foundation - one that privileges attention over doctrine.

In a cultural climate that often demands “positions,” Gao’s intent feels contrarian: literature begins not with a stance but with a gaze disciplined enough to notice contradictions, especially your own. That’s why it works. It’s an aesthetic principle with political teeth, smuggled in as common sense.