Jiang Rong > Quotes

“The grassland is a big life, but it's thinner than people's eyelids. If you rupture its grassy surface, you blind it, and dust storms are more lethal than the white-hair blizzards. If the grassland dies, so will the cows and sheep and horses, as well as the wolves and the people, all the little lives.”
― Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem

“Heaven and man do not easily come together, but a wolf and the grassland merge like water and milk.”
― Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem

“Does that mean that the grass doesn't constitute a life? That the grassland isn't a life? Out here, the grass and the grassland are the life, the big life. All else is the little life that depends on the big life for survival. Even wolves and humans are little life. Creatures that eat grass are worse than creatures that eat meat. To you, the gazelle is to be pitied. So the grass isn't to be pitied, is that it? The gazelles have four fast-moving legs, and most of the time wolves spit up blood from exhaustion trying to catch them. When the gazelles are thirsty, they run to the river to drink, and when they're cold, they run to a warm spot on the mountain to soak up some sun. But the grass? Grass is the big life, yet it is most fragile, the most miserable life. Its roots are shallow, the soil is thin, and though it lives on the ground, it cannot run away. Anyone can step on it, eat it, chew it, crush it. A urinating horse can burn a large spot in it. And if the grass grows in sand or in the cracks between rocks, it is even shorter, because it cannot grow flowers, which means it cannot spread its seeds. For us Mongols, there's nothing more deserving of pity than the grass. If you want to talk about killing, the the gazelles kill more grass than any mowing machine could. When they graze the land, isn't that killing? Isn't that taking the big life of the grassland? When you kill off the big life of the grassland, all the little lives are doomed. The damage done by the gazelles far outstrips any done by the wolves. The yellow gazelles are the deadliest, for they can end the lives of the people here.”
― Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem

“Protecting the grassland is hard on us. If we don't kill wolves, they'll be fewer of us. But if we kill too many of them, there'll be even fewer.”
― Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem

“The horses sped through the dense autumn grass, their hooves kicking up moths in various colors: pinks, oranges, whites, blues. There were also green, yellow, and multicolored grasshoppers and other autumn insects. A few purple swallows circled overhead, singing in their shrill voices; sometimes they darted right past the horses, and sometimes they shot up into the sky, enjoying the insect feast provided by the horses and humans.”
― Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem

“Those wolves were crueler even than the Japanese devils. They knew that all they had to do was rip open the bellies and let the horses die under their own hooves. I've never seen anything more sinister, more savage in my life. Those wolves embody the spirit of the Japanese samurai. Suicidal attacks don't faze them, and that makes Mongol wolves more fearful than any others. I won't rest till I kill every last one of them!”
― Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem

“Opportunities present themselves only to the patient, man and beast, and only they take advantage of those opportunities.”
― Jiang Rong

“How did people manage before there were flashlights?" Chen asked.

"With torches, wood wrapped with butter-soaked felt. They were as bright as these, and the wolves were scared to death of them. If one came at you, you could burn it's fur.”
― Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem

“The Yellow River causes a hundred calamities but enriches all it touches”
― Jiang Rong

“We Han worship the Dragon King, the one in charge of our agrarian lifeline—our dragon totem, the one we pay homage to, the one to whom we meekly submit. How can you expect people like that to learn from wolves, to protect them, to worship and yet kill them, like the Mongols? Only a people’s totem can truly rouse their ethnic spirit and character, whether it’s a dragon or a wolf. The differences between farming and nomadic peoples are simply too great.”
― Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem: A Novel

“அவன் ஒரே சமயத்தில் மிகவும் முன்னேற்றமடைந்தவனாகவும் மிகவும் தொன்மையானவனாகவும் இருப்பதுதான் ஜென்னுடைய சோகம்.”
― Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem

“Chen pointed to the cub. "There's your brute." Then he pointed to the pups. "And there's your domestication. For the most part, Westerners are descendants of barbarian, nomadic tribes such as the Teutons and the Anglo-Saxons. They burst out of the primeval forest like wild animals after a couple of thousand years of Greek and Roman civilization, and sacked ancient Rome. They eat steak, cheese, and butter with knives and forks, which is how they've retained more primitive wildness than the traditional farming races. Over the past hundred years, domesticated China has been bullied by the brutish West. It's not surprising that for thousands of years the Chinese colossus has been spectacularly pummeled by tiny nomadic peoples.”
― Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem