Cao Xueqin

"今风尘碌碌，一事无成。忽念及当日所有之女子，一一细考较去，觉其行止见识，皆出于我之上。何我堂堂之须眉，诚不若彼裙钗哉？实愧则有余，悔又无益之大无可如何之日也！当此，则自欲将已往所赖天恩祖德，锦衣纨绔之时，饫甘餍肥之日，背父兄教育之恩，负师友规谈之德，以至今日一技无成，半生潦倒之罪，编述一集，以告天下人：我之罪固不免，然闺阁中本自历历有人，万不可因我之不肖，自护己短，一并使其泯灭也。"

"满纸荒唐言，一把辛酸泪！ 都云作者痴，谁解其中味？"

"女兒是水作的骨肉，男人是泥作的骨肉。我見了女兒，我便清爽；見了男子，便覺濁臭逼人。"

"假作真时真亦假，无为有处有还无。"

"开辟鸿蒙，谁为情种？都只为风月情浓。"

"一个是水中月，一个是镜中花。"

"家富人宁，终有个家亡人散各奔腾。"

"问古来将相可还存，也只是虚名儿与后人钦敬。"

"侬今葬花人笑痴，他年葬侬知是谁？"

"一朝春尽红颜老，花落人亡两不知！"

"字字看來皆是血，十年辛苦不尋常 。"

"If anyone is in a hurry to read my novel, all he's got to do is keep me daily supplied with roast duck and good Shaoxing wine, and I'll be happy to oblige him."

"Wherever he was, he made it spring."

"Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in's forte is the unhurried exploration of every nuance of a situation."

"Proud bones such as yours the world finds rare; These are the crags of a true eccentric. You wield your brush like a roof beam, propelled by wine; From out your bosom pour rugged rocks."

"The idea that the worldling's 'reality' is illusion and that life itself is a dream from which we shall eventually awake is of course a Buddhist one; but in Xueqin's hands it becomes a poetical means of demonstrating that his characters are both creatures of his imagination and at the same time the real companions of his golden youth. To that extent it can be thought of as a literary device rather than as a deeply held philosophy, though it is really both."

"Ostensibly, [Cao Xueqin] has written a Taoist or Zen Buddhist comedy, showing mankind's hopeless involvement in desire and pain and the liberation of at least a few select individuals besides the hero. But only ostensibly, because the reader cannot but feel that the reality of suffering as depicted in the novel stirs far deeper layers of his being than the reality of Taoist wisdom; he cannot but respond to the author's vast sympathy for young and old, innocent and scheming, self-denying and self-indulgent. [...] In devoting his creative career to tracing the history of Baoyu and the Jia clan, Cao Xueqin is therefore the tragic artist caught between nostalgia for, and tormented determination to seek liberation from, the world of red dust."

"Cao Xueqin is a master of language. His prose is so exquisite and aesthetically pleasing that it almost attains perfection in every way."

"Both William Shakespeare and Cao Xueqin created more than 400 characters in their works. However, Shakespeare's cast of characters is distributed in thirty some plays and a few categories, such as the nobility and the servants, including the walk-on parts in different plays often with stereotypical personalities, while all of Cao's characters are tidily organized in one book yet every single one has a distinctive personality, a unique status and his or her own language, and none of them could be replaced by or mistaken for anyone else."

"It's a tragedy that a lot of people know more about Shakespeare than about Cao Xueqin."

"若云雪芹披阅增删，然则开卷至此这一篇楔子又系谁撰？足见作者之笔狡猾之甚。后文如此者不少。这正是作者用画家烟云模糊处，观者万不可被作者瞒蔽了去，方是巨眼。"

"能解者方有辛酸之泪，哭成此書。壬午除夕，書未成，芹爲泪盡而逝。余常哭芹，泪亦待盡。每思覓青埂峰再問石兄，奈不遇癩頭和尚何！悵悵！今而後惟願造化主再出一芹一脂，是書何幸，余二人亦大快遂心於九泉矣。甲午八日泪筆。"