"It is most likely that the author was the only one who owed and paid a debt of tears. I know something about this but not all the details."

“says that Xueqin worked on this book and revised it many times. In that case, who wrote all this preliminary section up to here? Evidently this is just the author playing a trick on us. He resorts to this sort of device in many other places besides this one. It's what painters call the "mist and cloud" technique. The reader, if he is wise, will be very careful not to be taken in by it.”

“Only one who understood the message of this book could have the hot and bitter tears with which to finish it. Xueqin, having run out of tears, departed this life on New Year's Eve of the year ren-wu leaving this book unfinished. I have wept so much for Xueqin that I fear I too shall soon run out of tears. I often wish that I could find where that Greensickness Peak is so that I could ask Brother Stone about his story. What a pity there is no scabby-headed monk to take me there! If only the Creator would produce another Xueqin and another Red Inkstone to complete this book, how happy the two of us would be, down there together in the World of Shades!”

“Persons whom I saw thirty years ago and with whom I was intimate now appear on the page, and this compels me to declare that The Story of the Stone is a book of the deepest feelings and the truest words. Unless, however, one has in fact experienced such events or been deluded by such feelings, reading it is like "chewing wax" absentmindedly, never understanding the miraculous wonders of what one has witnessed.”

“Commentaries on the Novel at Dream of the Red Chamber: Afterlives”