「那天我在一夜之內傳出數不盡的信息，直到他回覆，叫我不要再問下去了。誠然，我應該學懂等待的藝術，培養一種叫做耐心的植物。我想很多人都有這種經驗。你不能主動，你不能做任何事，你只能等他心血來潮問候幾句的時候平淡和緩地應答，你不該成為逼迫的力量，你是一株等待季節性陣雨的沙漠植物。」

the unbearable lightness of being

He suddenly recalled the famous myth from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split them in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

Oedipus

'You know the best thing about what you wrote?' the boy went on, and Tomas could see the effort it cost him to speak. 'Your refusal to compromise. Your clear-cut sense of what's good and what's evil, something we're beginning to lose. We have no idea any more what it means to feel guilty. The Communists have the excuse that Stalin misled them. Murderers have the excuse that their mothers didn't love them. And suddenly you come out and say: there is no excuse. No one could be more innocent, in hs soul and conscience, than Oedipus. And yet he punished himself when he saw what he had done.'

浪漫地不快樂。

因為對生命種種嚴峻而浪漫的要求， 我不能夠做一個快樂正常的人。

對倒

坐在上海舞廳裏聽吳鶯鶯唱「明月千里寄相思」，與坐在香港餐廳裏聽姚蘇蓉唱「今天不回家」，心情完全不同。心情不同，因為時代變了。那個時代已過去。屬於那個時代的一切都不存在了。他只能在回憶中尋求失去的歡樂。但是回憶中的歡樂，猶如一幀褪色的舊照片，模模糊糊，缺乏真實感。當他聽到姚蘇蓉的歌聲時，他想起消逝了的歲月。那些消逝了的歲月，彷彿隔著一塊積著灰塵的玻璃，看得到、抓不著。看到的種種，也是模模糊糊的。