My youngest brother had a wonderful schtick from some time in high school, through to graduating medicine. He had a card in his wallet that read, ‘If I am found with amnesia, please give me the following books to read …’ And it listed half a dozen books where he longed to recapture that first glorious sense of needing to find out ‘what happens next’ … the feeling that keeps you up half the night. The feeling that comes before the plot’s been learned.

We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.

It was different, though, knowing something in your thoughts and then hearing it confirmed, made real, planted in the world like a tree

By things so achingly small are lives measured and marred.

Liu Fang is a truly gifted, world-famous player of the pipa and the guzheng, classical Chinese stringed instruments.

Some writers later, describing the events of that night and day, wrote that Wan'yen of the Altai had seen a spirit-dragon of the river and become afraid. Writers do that sort of thing. They like dragons in their tales.

The deeds of men, as footprints in the desert. Nothing under the circling moons is fated to last. Even the sun goes down.