"A man should not marry after thirty years of age; should not enter the government service after the age of forty; sho…"

"What excites pleasure in me is the meeting and conversing with old friends. But it is very galling when my friends do…"

"My friends are all broad-minded, and well educated, but we do not keep a record of our conversations. The reason for …"

"I have only [written the Water Margin] to fill up my spare time, and give pleasure to myself; [...] I have written it…"

"Chinese novelists were afraid to let people know that they could condescend to such a thing as the writing of novels.…"

"I was carried away, swept along by the mighty stream of words pouring from the hundreds of pages. To me it was the ul…"

"It would evidently take more than a political regime, more than dire poverty to stop a woman from wanting to be well …"

"I kept my door more securely locked than ever and passed the time with foreign novels. Since Balzac was Luo’s favouri…"

"We had been so unlucky. By the time we had finally learnt to read properly, there had been nothing left for us to read."

"Picture, if you will, a boy of nineteen, still slumbering in the limbo of adolescence, having heard nothing but revol…"