David Hawkes (sinologist)

"I'd thought that what I'd like to do is to a translation where I don't have to think about academic considerations. Scholarly considerations. I'll just think about how to present – this is Penguins, a…"

"We must make sufficiently broad and humane to satisfy those whose interests are not narrowly philological by presenting Chinese literature as a part of our total human heritage; we must always insist …"

"It seems to me ridiculous to try to believe that Gao E sat down and wrote the last 40 chapters . I'm sure that's not true. Because you can see the way Gao E works. Gao E is trying I think just to reco…"

"The idea that the worldling's 'reality' is illusion and that life itself is a dream from which we shall eventually awake is of course a Buddhist one; but in Xueqin's hands it becomes a poetical means …"

"Our task is not the training of interpreters, nor the indulgence of exotic tastes, nor the revelation of some arcane Truth which the Orient possesses but we do not, nor the mastery of a sterile Asiati…"

"A translator has divided loyalties. He has a duty to his author, a duty to his reader and a duty to the text. The three are by no means identical and are often hard to reconcile."

"My one abiding principle has been to translate everything – even puns. For although this is...an 'unfinished' novel, it was written by a great artist with his very lifeblood. I have therefore assumed …"

"Many of the symbols, word-plays and secret patterns with which the novel abounds seem to be used out of sheer ebullience, as though the author was playing some sort of game with himself and did not mu…"