A Single Swallow

by Zhang Ling

The living can’t control their own days, but the dead are not thus bound. After death, the soul is no longer limited by time, space, or unexpected events. The soul’s world has no boundaries. To the soul, the entire universe and all eternity are just a thought away.

Peace pushed death to its proper place, many steps away from us.

The Americans learned the real meaning of the word “walking” not from dictionaries, but from their marches in China.

When I first became your instructor, no one was interested in remote or timed explosives. You all preferred close-range weapons, like grenades. You wanted to see the immediate effects of bodies blown to pieces. 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 was like a chisel, patiently chipping away, an inch at a time, at your stubborn way of thinking. I told you that if a specially trained soldier was sacrificed, it was a huge waste of manpower and material resources. Only by staying alive could you destroy the enemy, so any action plan that didn’t include safe evacuation wasn’t worth trying. You dismissed my advice and made me out to be a coward, afraid to die. My view was eventually accepted, but that was later, after you’d tasted the sweetness of large-scale lethality that such special technology held.

I told you that if a specially trained soldier was sacrificed, it was a huge waste of manpower and material resources. Only by staying alive could you destroy the enemy, so any action plan that didn’t include safe evacuation wasn’t worth trying.

Hate that can find expression is not hate. Hate must come to the end of its own rope before being forgotten.

Facing death is a form of bravery, but so is facing life.

The rule among tea-growing families was that work done by hand could be done by women, but work done by foot had to be done by men, since women’s feet were considered unlucky.

Time is a miraculous thing. It can wear down the thorns of emotion, gradually eroding them to dust, and from this dust, a new sprout grows. That sprout is the power of life.

“If you want to die in your first battle, that’s cowardly. Your training is too expensive. You aren’t here to learn how to die. The person who rushes to the front and dies in the most tragic manner isn’t the winner. If you live to the end, until you’ve beaten all your enemies, then you’re the real hero.”

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.

After going through so much, Stella no longer trusted crowds, and she no longer trusted emotions that were too big, such as great sorrow or great joy.

The word loved to fall on the apex of the heart, and as soon as it touched the heart, the heart was no longer free.

To the person who is leaving, the attraction of what lies ahead is greater than what lies behind. Recollection is something that is left for later.

there will be sleeping enough in the grave.

It is a common mistake to think that humans are the only occupants of this world.

It was as my poor mother had often said when she was alive, that it’s always easier to use someone else’s things.