Ba Jin quotes:

I believe in the future a new Dante will write a new Divine Comedy.

Loving truth and living honestly is my attitude to life. Be true to yourself and be true to others, thus you can be the judge of your behavior.

I've lived on royalties all my life. It is the readers who have supported me.

Victory is for them, not for us. We have not made profit out of our country's misfortune. Victory does not bring us luck.

Nobody would say the cowshed was heaven and nobody would say the inhuman torture of so many victims be called a revolution of the proletariat. ... A museum should be established to remind China of the follies and disasters that had fallen from 1966 to 1976. We cannot forget what had happened and history should not repeat itself.

You have your thoughts and I have mine. This is the fact and you can't change it even if you kill me.

I write just because the fire of my emotion is burning. Had I not, I would not have been able to find peace.

Before my eyes are many miserable scenes, the suffering of others and myself forces my hands to move. I become a machine for writing.

My pen is alight and my body aflame. Until both burn down to ash, my love and my hate will remain here in the world.

I have spent myself on all kinds of things ... I have advanced much politically but I have written little and moreover have written it badly.

I am a person always full of contradictions... It was hard to choose whether to devote myself to revolution as a soldier or as a writer.

Only by not forgetting the past can we be the master of the future.