1. An artist must try all experiences, from the noblest to the most unbecoming.
— *Youth*2. Who is persecuting you? The Ministry of Civil Affairs will ask. What are you trying to escape? "Escape from boredom," he will answer. "Escape from vulgar, mercenary ways. Escape from the atrophy of moral life. Escape from shame. A sincere, red heart yearns for a perfect world, but reality is like an old house inhabited and used by generations, broken and fragmented. That dreamlike place in your heart won't let you in; standing outside the door, you only feel the desolation of autumn winds sweeping away fallen leaves.
" — *Youth*
3. He lies, but he never deceives himself.
—"The Boy"
4. Dostoevsky's characters, the "coincidental family" is the modern capitalist urban family model, presenting a hypocritical, rootless state; it has no family public value as its foundation, nor ancient faith as its basis... What Dostoevsky worried about was the disintegration of the ancient patriarchal family, the demise of aristocratic moral consciousness, the crowding out of faith by personal desires, and the loss of binding force of the family community; in other words, he worried about the rampant spread of modern nihilism... A world without God
—"The Childhood of Jesus"
5. Spiritual life, he thought to himself, is this what we dedicate ourselves to? Will I and these lonely wanderers deep in the British Museum one day be rewarded? Will our loneliness disappear, or is spiritual life itself its reward?
—"Youth"
6. He occasionally had brief opportunities to look at himself from the outside: a muttering, worried, immature man, so monotonous and ordinary that you wouldn't give him a second glance.
—Youth
7. Normal people find that being bad isn't easy.
—Youth
8. The purpose of psychotherapy is to make people happy. What's the point? Happy people are too boring. It's better to accept the burden of unhappiness and try to transform it into something valuable.
—Youth
8. This isn't what I dreamt. Like many things I'm experiencing now that have made me numb; like someone who's been lost for a long time, yet still stubbornly continues down this road that may lead to nothingness.
—Waiting for the Barbarians
9. Why get used to hunger?
—Hunger is like a dog in your stomach: the more you feed it, the more it wants.
—Then why do you preach to us in such an ascetic tone? You tell us to suppress our hunger and let the dog inside us starve. Why? What's wrong with hunger? How can desire be expressed if we don't express what we need? How can we live if we have no appetite, no desire?
—"The Childhood of Jesus"
10.
A book should be an axe, it cleaves open the frozen sea inside us.
—"Summer"
11. Surrender yourself to the world, like a fruit spitting out its kernel.
12. Every man can lose himself for a woman.
—"Waiting for the Barbarians"
13. At night, the moon causes a faint tide between the ears.
—"The Dark Land"
14. The distant shouts of children, the songs of birds, the buzzing of insects grew louder and louder, merging into a joyous hymn. His heart was filled with passion. He thought, finally! Finally, the moment of joyful union with the universe has come! Fearing that this moment would disappear, he tried to calm his restless thoughts and simply be a conductor of this great, nameless cosmic force. …Here, on this meadow under the gentle spring sunshine, the promise of his development unexpectedly came. If he had not yet been completely transformed, then at least he was fortunate enough to receive the hint that he belonged to this world.
—"Youth"
15. It may not look very impressive, and it's a bit clumsy to operate, but the engine is very powerful and quite impressive.
—"The Childhood of Jesus"
16. Seriously, man is not born to be alone!
—"Waiting for the Barbarians"
17. A man may run away from home for hundreds of miles, but he will return within a day for food and warmth.
—"Waiting for the Barbarians"
18. Seriously, this world should belong to singers and dancers! Pain is insignificant; what use is depression? Regret is all vanity!
—"Waiting for the Barbarians"
20. One should not belittle a superior in front of a subordinate, just as one should not belittle a father in front of a child, but to this man, I have no respect or loyalty.
—"Waiting for the Barbarians"
21. If I had known from the beginning how to joke with her with such unrestrained banter, there might have been more warmth between us. But I was like a fool, giving her only melancholy instead of joy.
—Waiting for the Barbarians
22. I noticed that she liked facts and valued practical maxims; she had no wild fantasies, nor did she question or pry into anything.
—Waiting for the Barbarians
23. We are immigrants in this era of globalization. The so-called "new immigrants" are not just a historical concept (as opposed to 19th-century immigrants), but also a metaphor for contemporary cultural identity. They do not rely on family public values, nor on ancient beliefs, and in fact, they do not trust the protection and legacy of the remnants of national culture. In this era of globalization, the particularity of national culture is still a reality, while the independence of national culture is merely an illusion. We do not need to deceive ourselves. We need to redefine ourselves in the process of cultural translation.
—The Childhood of Jesus
24. A living body can only generate just thoughts when it is intact. When the head of this body is blocked, a tube is inserted into its throat to force-feed a pint of saline solution, causing it to cough incessantly and unable to vomit, and it is repeatedly whipped, it will soon forget all thoughts and become a blank.
—Waiting for the Barbarians
25. Yes, but we're all a little desperate, that's life. If you're strong, you have to overcome despair. That's why I ask: how can you become a great writer if you're just an ordinary little guy? There must be some kind of fire inside you that sets you apart from the masses. Maybe it's in his books, if you've read them, you can see that fire. But to me, during the time I met him, I never felt it. Instead, he seemed—how should I put it—cold and indifferent. In a sense, I agree with you. When you read his books, "fire" is the least likely word to come to mind. But he has other strengths, another kind of power.
—Summer
26. As far as he was concerned, he hoped she was interested in the things themselves, not just in them because he was interested.
—Boy
27. Pain is the truth; everyone else is worthy of suspicion.
—Waiting for the Barbarians
28. I admire peace, no matter the cost.
Waiting for the Barbarians
29. These two things seem to complement each other: a man who doesn't know how to deal with the woman in his bed also doesn't know how to express himself in words.
Waiting for the Barbarians
30. I'm very happy to be alone in a familiar and comfortable world again
. Waiting for the Barbarians
(1)
31. In this seemingly frozen time, fate seems to be locked in a certain pattern - everything is not what it is, but represents something else.
Waiting for the Barbarians
32. Politics makes people use their most evil side, it is a symptom of human depravity. In this world, in this world where someone wants to steal your money and will chop you up with an axe, you will never find a place to hide yourself and remain untainted.
Summer
33. He and I share the same view of South Africa, simply put, our (white) presence there (South Africa) is legal but unreasonable. We have an abstract right, an inherent right, but this basic right is deceptive. Our existence is rooted in a sin, colonial conquest, permanently fixed through apartheid. This is how we feel about ourselves, whether facing natives or indigenous people. We feel like sojourners, temporary residents; in this sense, we have no home, no homeland… We know too much about our fate, so much so that we can only see it as a tragic one. We too had youth, we had decent educations, even a little wealth. If we wanted to leave, to settle somewhere in this world—the civilized world, the First World—we might be successful, with great prospects. —Summer
33.
Stumbling through the salt flats, for a moment I was startled by a thought: I might have fallen in love with that girl from a distant land. But now, all I want is to live comfortably in a familiar world, to die in my own bed, to be taken to the cemetery by my old friends.
—Waiting for the Barbarians
34. You have to remember that's just how he is—in his mind, he's a product of the 1960s. …I mean, bound by some pure ideal, some rationality or faith. He himself didn't possess the Dionysian spirit of revelry, but he admired the tenets of the Dionysian spirit. He admired spontaneity and ease, although I don't seem to see him ever being spontane or easygoing himself—perhaps he didn't know how. He needed to believe in that unconscious burst of talent, the creativity in the unconscious process.
—Summer
35. Practicality usually triumphs over principle, because that's just how things are. The universe is in motion, the earth beneath our feet is changing, and principles always lag behind. Principles are the content of comedy. Comedy is what we get when principles collide with reality.
—Summer
36. Liberate yourself! What do you want to liberate yourself from? Love? Responsibility? When you don't even love yourself. When you've decided to be a romantic and unrestrained person but lack the talent, everything just floats in your mind, not rooted in your flesh and blood. When you can't fit with others or make others fit with you. When you're like a sphere. When you can't fully commit yourself and can't bear the risk of losing your dignity in the throes of love, you can only become a lonely, sour plum huddled in a corner. And how can you become a writer when you know nothing about love? It's best to sever ties between what you love and yourself, cutting off any hope of healing your wounds. Oh, of course, the weak are more hateful than the bad.
—Summer
37. You have nothing but your youth, but it is precisely this few things that determine what kind of person you are.
38. Do you know what surprised me most about this place? There was a reckless, unbridled energy in his voice. Perhaps he should have stopped there, but he wouldn't shut up. "There's no guts here. Everyone I've met is polite, kind, and helpful. There's no cursing or anger. Nobody gets drunk. Nobody even raises their voice. In your lives, this bread, water, and sauerkraut is your daily diet, and you claim that's enough. How is that possible? Is this human language? Are you lying to yourselves?"
— *The Childhood of Jesus*
39. That's the purpose of war: to impose a coercive choice on those unwilling to comply.
— *Waiting for the Barbarians*
40. This clearly and obviously suggests that Latin and algebra do not point to a successful path in the material world. The deeper implication here seems to be that the relentless pursuit of knowledge is a waste of time. If you want to succeed in this world, have a happy family, a beautiful house, and a BMW, you shouldn't strive to acquire knowledge. Just know how to do addition, or how to manipulate buttons, or simply do what a marketer does to earn a high return.
—Summer
41. The executioners didn't care about the degree of pain; they wanted to prove to me what a living body meant. A living body can only generate just thoughts when it is intact. When the body's head is choked, a tube is inserted into its throat and a pint of saline solution is poured in, causing it to cough incessantly, unable to vomit, and then being whipped repeatedly, it quickly forgets all thought and becomes a blank.
—Waiting for the Barbarians
42. Doesn't everyone have such a period in their youth, with lofty ambitions that are difficult to achieve, living in confusion, wasting time in a daze, and ultimately either compromising and becoming just like everyone else, or unable to find a way out and being trapped by life? At this moment, family and friends, seeing this, even if they don't say anything, are probably thinking, "Why should a small-town youth have such lofty ambitions?"
— *Youth*
43. He dissolved all self-consolation with intellectual honesty, distancing himself from vulgar and worthless dramatic enlightenment and repentance.
— *Youth*
44. His choice was to wear a black suit like them, like a fiery logo shirt, not exploiting anyone, not deceiving anyone, relying on his own efforts. In the Romantic era, artists went mad on a massive scale. Their madness poured out from them in the form of a flood of hallucinatory poems or vast expanses of color. That era has passed: if fate demands madness from him, his own madness will be different—quiet, inconspicuous. He will sit in a corner, tense, hunched over, like the robed man in Dürer's etching, patiently waiting for the end of his resistance to this period. When this period is over, he will be stronger for enduring the pain.
—From *Youth*
44. There will definitely be a form of cohabitation where men and women eat together, sleep together, and live together, yet remain immersed in their own inner explorations.
—From *Youth*
45. To be just another face in the crowd. Even heroes are just "the masses." The glamour or greatness of others is merely gossip fodder to keep things interesting. There's nothing wrong with being just another face in the crowd. Like Larry, who traveled the world and finally returned to New York, becoming one of the millions of taxi drivers, finding peace within himself—that's enough.
—From *Youth*
46. As long as she lives, he dares not die.
—From *Youth*
47. Happiness, he told himself, offers no lessons to people. But suffering enables one to face the future with strength. Suffering is the school of the soul.
—From *Youth*
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