"Did one man write Shui Hu Chuan, or did it grow to its present shape, added to, rearranged, deepened and developed by many minds and many a hand, in different centuries? Who can now tell? They are dead. They lived in their day and wrote what in their day they saw and heard, but of themselves they have told nothing."

“Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.”

“The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.”

“The street is noisy and the men and women are not perfect in the technique of their expression as the statues are. They are ugly and imperfect, incomplete even as human beings, and where they come from and where they go cannot be known. But they are people and therefore infinitely to be preferred to those who stand upon the pedestals of art.”

“Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.”

“The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.”

“Story belongs to the people. They are sounder judges of it than anyone else, for their senses are unspoiled and their emotions are free.”