“ Calligraphy may well be simply an artistic version of another form, that is the ideograms which make up the poem, but then not only does it reflect the character and temperament of the artist but . .… Dai Sijie
“ I was carried away, swept along by the mighty stream of words pouring from the hundreds of pages. To me it was the ultimate book: once you had read it, neither your own life nor the world you lived in… Dai Sijie
“ A name with a gently exotic ring to it, like birdsong, like a grain of sand in the far-off Gobi Desert or the northern steppes, whipped up by the wind, carried by storms, swirling through the sky, tra… Dai Sijie
“ The only thing Luo was really good at was telling stories. A pleasing talent to be sure, but a marginal one, with little future in it. Modern man has moved beyond the age of the Thousand-and-One-Night… Dai Sijie
“ Often, after extinguishing the oil lamp in our house on stilts, we would lie on our beds and smoke in the dark. Book titles poured from our lips, the mysterious and exotic names evoking unknown worlds… Dai Sijie
“ At various points in our lives, or on a quest, for reasons that often remain obscure , we are driven to make decisions which prove with hindsight to be loaded with meaning. Dai Sijie
“ She said she had learnt one thing from Balzac: that a woman's beauty is a treasure beyond price. Dai Sijie
“ In Chinese love stories the one who loves always starts by borrowing a book from the beloved. Dai Sijie
“ In the end we had changed the position of the hands so many times that we had no idea what the time really was. Dai Sijie
“ We had been so unlucky. By the time we had finally learnt to read properly, there had been nothing left for us to read. Dai Sijie
“ Is there just one single love in a lifetime? Are all our lovers from the first to the last, including the most fleeting part of that unique love, and is each of them merely an expression of it, a va… Dai Sijie
“ I kept my door more securely locked than ever and passed the time with foreign novels. Since Balzac was Luo's favourite I put him to one side, and with the ardour and earnestness of my eighteen years… Dai Sijie
“ It would evidently take more than a political regime, more than dire poverty to stop a woman from wanting to be well-dressed: it was a desire as old as the world, as old as the desire for children. Dai Sijie
