A Single Swallow

by Zhang Ling

A victory that you hadn’t seen with your own eyes couldn’t be a real victory, just as a life that didn’t dare to risk everything couldn’t be called a life.

I finally found the way to heal Stella. She didn’t need comfort, and she didn’t need to forget. She needed to save herself by saving others.

Diligence clips the wings of cleverness, allowing it to stay firmly on the ground. Persistence grinds away the sharp edges of cleverness, not allowing it to take shortcuts through things. Cleverness thus clipped can more fully penetrate the nature of things.

We’re always most hurtful to the ones closest to us. It’s convenient, lashing out at them.

My patience was already a wrinkled old man.