The most painful thing in life is to wake up from a dream and find no way out. Dreamers are fortunate people. If no way out can be seen, the important thing is not to awaken the sleepers.

The most important thing... was to change their spirit; and since at that time I felt that literature was the best means to this end, I decided to promote literary movement.

It is in the nature of things that some people should be unlucky enough to get their heads chopped off.

If men refuse to be kindled, sparks can only burn themselves out, just as paper images and carriages burn out on the street during funerals.

I felt that if a man's proposals met with approval, it should encourage him; if they met with opposition, it should make him fight back; but the real tragedy for him was to lift up his voice among the living and meet with no response neither approval nor opposition just as if he were left helpless in a boundless desert.

Creation, even when it is a mere outpouring from the heart, wishes to find a public. By definition, creation is sociable. Yet it can be satisfied with merely one single reader: an old friend, a lover.

Like students going to school, the planes on their bombing missions fly over Beijing each morning. And each time I hear their engines attack the air I feel a certain slight tension, as if I were witnessing the invasion of Death, though this heightens my consciousness of the existence of Life.