The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)

by Liu Cixin

He had known her for just one week, and the breakup proceeded smoothly, as elegantly as a rocket discarding its booster.

did he spare her any of his precious sorrow.

What sort of a person was he? But what could be done? That’s just the sort of person he was.

Have you ever made even a small, permanent bit of room in your heart for anyone else?

Five years before, the golden light of love had inhabited his heart. But that had been an unreal experience.

Reading them was like looking at dewdrops on the undergrowth: pure and transparent, but distinguished from each other only by the way the light reflected and refracted through them and how they rolled about on the leaves, fusing together where they met and separating when they fell, until they evaporated entirely within the space of a few minutes after sunrise.

What do these people live on if they spend twenty-four hours a day in love?

What a literary character does in ten minutes might be a reflection of ten years’ experience. You can’t be limited to the plot of a novel—you’ve got to imagine her entire life, and what actually gets put into words is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Like a creator outside of time, he wove the different stages of her life together and gradually came to discover the endless pleasure of creation.

The smile had already imprinted itself on his memory like a stain on ice, never to be wiped away.

But this time his imagination failed, and she continued walking outside in the blizzard like a blade of grass that could blow away at any moment.

As his mind was sputtering to life, she came quietly, her small frame wrapped in a layer of cold from the outdoors, but with a breath of spring amid the chilliness.

she looked at him with excitement and asked the question he was about to ask her: “Are you okay?”

A fireplace? When the hell did I get a fireplace? Why would I think of a fireplace? But then he understood: What he wanted wasn’t a fireplace, but the glow of the fire, for it is in firelight that a woman is most beautiful. He recalled how she had looked just then against the glow of the fire....

students. Instead, she watched him, and flashed him another snowy-sunrise of a smile.

“I like twilight better.” “Why?” “When twilight fades, you can see the stars. When dawn fades, all that’s left is...” “All that’s left is the harsh light of reality.”

“Now you realize you were wrong. This is the difference between an ordinary scribe and a literary writer. The highest level of literary creation is when the characters in a novel possess life in the mind of the writer. The writer is unable to control them, and might not even be able to predict the next action they will take. We can only follow them in wonder to observe and record the minute details of their lives like a voyeur. That’s how a classic is made.”

Their minds give birth only to shattered fragments and freaks, whose brief lives are nothing but cryptic spasms devoid of reason. Then they sweep up these fragments into a bag they peddle under the label ‘postmodern’ or ‘deconstructionist’ or ‘symbolism’ or ‘irrational.’”

Where would you like to go?” She drank in the dancing flames in the fireplace and said, “It’s not important where we go. I think it’s a wonderful feeling just being on a journey.”

Even the dogs were the same long-haired, short-legged parasites found in the cities.

Before they knew it, the road had entered the mountains, which were plain and ordinary in shape and devoid of vegetation apart from withered grasses and vitex vines in the crevices of the gray rocks. Over the course of hundreds of millions of years, the mountains, weary of standing, had lain down, sunken into flatness amid time and sunlight, and turned anyone walking among them just as indolent.

“The mountains here are like old villagers basking in the sun,” she said, but they hadn’t seen any of those old men in the villages they passed through; none more at ease than the mountains.

Her long hair blew in the light evening breeze, seemingly striving to seize hold of the last golden rays.

“Nice and warm,” she said, gazing into the fire, as happy as she had been that first night in front of the fireplace. Again he was transfixed by her appearance in the firelight, drowned in emotions he had never felt before, as if he was a bonfire himself and the only purpose of his existence was to give her warmth.

They were silent for a long time, during which radio waves spun their gossamer strands through the mountains to sustain this final contact.

Bai Rong hung up, snapping the thread that stretched across the night sky and leaving the people at the two ends a little saddened, but nothing more than that.

“I’m madly in love with a fictional person from a novel of my own creation. I’ve been with her, I’ve traveled with her, and I’ve even broken up with my real-life girlfriend over her. Is that nothing serious to you?”

I’ve given my most profound love to an illusion!”

For the majority of people, what they love exists only in the imagination. The object of their love is not the man or woman of reality, but what he or she is like in their imagination. The person in reality is just a template used for the creation of this dream lover. Eventually, they find out the differences between their dream lover and the template. If they can get used to those differences, then they can be together. If not, they split up. It’s as simple as that. You differ from the majority in one respect: You didn’t need a template.”

You’ve got natural literary talent. If you want to call that a sickness, go right ahead.”

This was Luo Ji’s most deeply felt romantic experience, a love that only comes around once in a man’s life. After that, he took to an insouciant lifestyle, going where life took him, just like the day they had set out in the Accord.

But he knew that the most secluded part of his soul belonged to her, and she would be there for life.

He could still see her in a far-off region of his soul, sitting silently before the fireplace, never feeling lonely, because she knew her world was within him.

When you’ve thought of everything you should, and done everything you need to, then let whatever happens happen.

When they shook hands, Luo Ji sensed that the man was incredibly experienced. So much was hidden behind his decorum, but the gleam in his eyes betrayed the presence of secrets.

Luo Ji was fascinated by the man’s gaze, like a devil and an angel, like an atom bomb and an identical-size precious stone.... In the complex information conveyed by those eyes, Luo Ji could make out just one thing: This moment was immensely important to the man’s whole life.