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

- Ba Jin

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.

- Ba Jin

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

- Ba Jin

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

- Ba Jin

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.

- Ba Jin

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

- Ba Jin

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

- Ba Jin

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

- Ba Jin

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

- Ba Jin