Once on a Moonless Night Quotes

“In Chinese love stories the one who loves always starts by borrowing a book from the beloved.”
― Dai Sijie, Once on a Moonless Night

“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 . . . also betrays his heart rate, his breathing.”
― Dai Sijie, Once on a Moonless Night

“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, Once on a Moonless Night

“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 variation, a particular version? In the same way that in literature there is just one true masterpiece to which different writers give a particular form (taking the twentieth century alone: Joyce, who explores everything happening inside his character;s head with microscopic precision; Proust, for whom the present is merely a memory of the past; Kafka, who drifts on the margins between dream and reality; the blind Borges, probably the one I relate to best, etc).”
― Dai Sijie, Once on a Moonless Night

“Our imagination is dictated by who we are. (198)”
― Dai Sijie, Once on a Moonless Night

“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, travelling, crossing whole countries without knowing quite how, and ending up in the crook of my ear.”
― Dai Sijie, Once on a Moonless Night