Quotes by Qiu Miaojin

With sincerity, courage, & honesty, one can face death, extreme physical pain, & even extreme psychological pain. One can resist persecution from individuals, society, or government. To live in preparation of adversity & finding ways to preserve your core values --this is what it means to learn how to live.

Passion. Its not a male bodys, & its not a female bodys Its not the penetration or reception of sex organs, & its not how powerful a body is or the amount of its sexual secretions. Its not how a person expresses their strengths or weaknesses to other people. Passion is a quality, a quality that is an energy resource that someone can tap into within themselves. The type of passion Ive been searching for in people is similar to my own. Its not necessarily in the body of a woman.

Its easy for the body to be open to desiring different people because desire wells up & demands to be satisfied. Its easy to categorize corporeal desire as sexuality, but if it has no means of merging with spiritual desire, then a rupture will occur between sprit & flesh. For ultimately passion & sex arent only expressed physically but through a true union between two spirits. When the spirit can truly love & find contentment, both the body & the other key aspects of life will fall naturally into place, working in unison, merging.

I love my own kind—womankind.

Suicide. This is the exact opposite of last time, for this time Im experiencing a kind of pleasure in life, in being alive, a pleasure in living that Ive never experienced before, and Im hopeful and confident that I can become someone with dignity. I know now why I couldnt change certain characteristics and certain things about myself, but its not a problem anymore. Certain pathways I failed to open in the past have now opened. My whole self is radiating light. I see with clarity. I understand the cause and effect of the last year. What I had imagined Ive now attained. Its as if I can see my life right in front of my eyes, and all I have to do is reach out and draw it in... Now I dont feel the acute pain I felt before; I feel enlightened, at peace. Its as if Ive instantly found the secret of Suffering, how to bear it and how to endure it... Yes, this time Ive decided to kill myself not because I cant live with suffering and not because I dont enjoy being alive. I love life passionately, and my wish to die is a wish to live...Yes, Ive chosen suicide. The endpoint of this process of Forgiveness. Not to punish anyone or to protest a wrong. Ive chosen suicide with a clarity Ive never possessed before, with a rational resolve and sense of calm, in order to pursue the ultimate meaning of my life, act on my belief about the beauty between two people... I take complete responsibility for my life, and even if my physical body disappears upon death, I dont believe my spirit will disappear. As long as I have loved people fully, then I can be content fading into Nothingness. If Im using death to express my passion for life, then I still dont love her enough, dont love life enough. and I will reincarnate in a different form to love her and to be part of her life... So the death of my flesh really doesnt mean anything. Doesnt solve anything.Is this a tragedy? Will there be tragedy?

And on it flows. I long to lie down quietly by the banks of a blue lake and die ... and when Im dead for my body to be consumed by birds and beasts, leaving only the bone of my brow for Xu ... like Alexander, loyal to an everlasting love.

Love is not merely need alone, & what is more important is loving you, & making my true nature comprehensible to you.

Human nature has its fatal weaknesses, but love means embracing the whole of human nature, the bad within the good, the benign within the malicious, the beautiful within the tragic. Love is the experience of this whole, its unfinished parts, including those of ones own in relation to those of the other.

Loyalty is not a passive, negative guardianship of the gate-- loyalty arises from the complete & utter opening & subsequent blazing forth of ones inner life. It is an active, determined desire that demands total self-awareness & deliberate engagement.

My prototype of a woman was the type who would appear in hallucinations at the last moments of your freezing to death at the top of an icy mountain, a mythical beauty who blurred the line between dreams and reality. For four years, that’s what I believed. And I wasted all of my university days–during which I had the most courage and honesty I would ever have towards life–because of it.

She had sought me out. I knew it would happen. Even if I had switched to a different section, she would have sought me out all the same. She, who hid in the crowd, who didn’t want anyone to see her behind her veil of averted eyes and aloofness. When I stepped forward, she came out, too. And she pointed and said, revealing a child’s wanton smile: “That’s the one I want.” And like a potted sunflower that had just been sold to a customer, I was taken away. There was no way to refuse. This, from a beautiful girl that I was already deeply, viscerally attracted to. Things were getting good.