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.

We feared crushing the tender pieces of old memories buried beneath the changes.

Time is a strange thing. It washes away the outer skin of solemnity and reveals the absurd nature of things.

When you live to be nearly a century old, your greatest blessing is that you’ve attended the funeral of nearly everyone you know. Your greatest sorrow is that they can’t repay the respect you’ve shown them. They won’t, or rather can’t, come to your funeral. They not only won’t be at your funeral but also won’t visit you.

“Everything that happens in this world happens for reasons suited to its particular time,”

The days were like water, always flowing forward, not looking back, and waiting for no one.

Putting on my father’s clothes was like putting on his courage.

To the eyes of a girl who’d lost her father, everything lost its color.

This troubled world was like a knife that didn’t even recognize its own family and cut childhood short. All the young people who went through it were turned into adults in one swift stroke.

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.

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.

If every brick had cracks, how could I build a solid wall with them?

They broke their energy into smaller units, using it sparingly, exactly the same way they managed their silver coins. They never used their energy on emotions like anxiety, excitement, depression, or despair. They didn’t think about how far they had traveled from their starting point, nor did they consider how far they were from their destination. They just focused on the next step.

“Stella, gossip is like dust in the wind. After it flies around for a while, it will settle. You can’t avoid going outside because of the dust. If you just take the first step, you’ll see it isn’t as scary as you imagine.”

a person’s thinking runs in a straight line when they are young, unaware that there may be a curve, a bend, sometimes even a few various branches, in the journey from information heard to conclusion drawn.

The war was a meat grinder and also a roller. It ground all life into meat and loam. It squeezed love into sympathy, attachment into trust, and carnal lust into a need to stay together for warmth.