–The dung-beetle patiently rolled its small ball of elephant dung over the eternal spaces of its small corner of the Serengetti Plain, almost as if it were rolling the universe around itself, until it reached its destination.
–I like to have curtains on my windows, as I need darkness to sleep in, and because I do not like other people to look in on what I am doing.
–The wild geese flew low over the winter marshes a few minutes before the last clear light disappeared from the sky, as they knew the determined goose hunters were waiting for them, and they wanted to remain as difficult to see as possible.
–I like to wander aimlessly through the night market alone, watching the thousand-and-one minute details of life that are played out in front of me, and letting my imagination turn a mere second’s observation into an evening of imagination for the next short story.
–There was one boy on the street who sold candied haws on a stick, who would pipe out his wares in the manner of a consumptive choirboy, pleading with the faceless passers-by with both his faltering voice and his desperate eyes.
–Above the street’s long market place, with its almost cocoon-like web of dangling electric lights and shouting vendors, the unfathomable depths of dark night sky seemed almost to shut off the city from the rest of the imagined universe.
–I payed no attention to the immense and incomprehensible things above and beyond the lights, but walked slowly among the aimlessly milling people, observing them closely for just one element of their mundane life to expand upon in the next story.
–A few people were gathered around a woman selling “chou dou fu” from Hunan, drawn together in part by the woman’s imaginative salesmanship, as well as the pungent and fiercely evocative scent of the deep-fried tofu.
–I ate three skewers of the tofu in silence, allowing my mind to be thrown back to another old tofu-selling woman in Changsha, whose home-made tofu became the standard for every other skewer of tofu I ever ate.
–The people in the night market slowly lost their sense of individuality and appearance of purpose, but imperceptibly blended themselves into something almost inanimate and floating, making me forget why I had come to this place.
–After wandering around the night market for an hour or two and doing nothing, I took a slow bus home to my curtained-off apartment, and began the dreamlike process of turning a myriad of unrelated snapshots of life into a skein of writing.
–For three days now, the landscape has been entombed in a thick sheet of ice from the ice-storm, a slippery skin of white glass that is impossible to break through.
–I try to keep my mind sane and content by learning new things, in the hope they will be useful in the next chapter of life, when I can move from this place to the next.
–It must be wonderful to wander in a balloon through the clouds of a moonlit winter sky, where everything is at the same time indistinct and ghostly grey, and both the earth below and the infinite skies above are unseen and left to the imagination.
–I do not know why people like to live in luxury, or why they seem to believe that “living the good life” is some sort of duty, since there are so many other interesting things to be done in life.
–I went home after dinner in the local restaurant, read for an hour, and then went to bed.
–There is a beach about five or six miles from here, and throughout my life it has been a sort of iconic “touchstone” of the soul, a place to re-connect with between the many wandering chapters of my life.
–It is strange that the sound of another airplane passing overhead can bring my mind back home from the place of dreams, back into the world of reality and the patient computer before me, and that this “translation” of my imaginative mind is also a comfortable thing.
–Writing this book on “sentences and paragraphs” calms my nervous feelings, especially after a day doing mundane but necessary things, but sometimes I worry about the long road ahead of me to the end of the book.
–It is difficult to visit my woodland property frequently, but in my imagination and letters to the builders, I am arranging all kinds of details there every day.
–There are many “layers” of life in the sea, and the deeper we go, the less we know about what really goes on there.
–I went to the “abandoned property” section of the town dump a few days ago, and was surprised to find a very large suitcase, which was in almost perfect condition.
–I could not understand why someone would throw away such a good suitcase, but I was grateful for the opportunity to take it home, and I quickly put it into the back of the car.
–After the dinner-party guests have left, the house loses its former energy and sense of urgency, and an exhausted torpor settles over everyone left behind.
–Photographs of friends are both good and bad, for they show you how attractive the friends are, but they also trigger memories of the occasional quarrels you had.
–There were many people that I did not speak to just before I left the city, as I was too tired to do anything, and my grief at departing made me want to just pack up and run away.
–Writing is like a mistress with changing emotions, in that it demands you to sacrifice your energy to the cause of “painting” imagination, but it also yields amazing ideas without charge.
–This past hour of writing has been very fruitful, but the beautiful forest outside faded and vanished into the darkness of another winter night, without my even being aware of it.
–Due to the day-time melting and the night-time freezing, the ice on the pond has become much smoother and flatter, making it possible for the local children to go skating.
–When one of my friends went home for the annual family holiday, she was criticized by her family for not having a boyfriend, and this made her feel sad throughout the whole holiday.
–Once every day, I take my friend to the local market to buy groceries, and this makes his life more convenient.
–The sky is very blue at this time of the year, especially in the days after a major snowstorm, and this lifts everyone’s spirits higher.
–Mary likes to add Indian curry to her sauces, as this makes her food taste more interesting, and it always provides a topic of conversation during Sunday dinner parties.
–Ten people came to the dinner party yesterday, and most of them brought something for the appetizer or dessert, so there was too much food on the table that day.
–The teacher stayed in his office correcting homework for many hours after the last class, while all the other teachers went out to a huge party at the local restaurant, as he wanted to finish his week’s work on time.
–Libraries are the most important public service to keep in operation during extended economic recessions, as they provide a quiet place for jobless people to study and research in, away from the harassed tedium of the outside world.
–There is often nobody to call and chat with when you are lonely and have nothing to do, but when you are tired and want o have a nap in the afternoon, everyone wants to call about something.
–There are so many sentences floating around my head at odd moments of the day, but when I sit down in front of the computer to write “Type Three” sentences, they disappear from the furthest corners of my imagination.
–While staying with my friend, I have often run up and down the stairs to answer various calls, and this has given me a lot of exercise.
–Some people like to eat cold cereal in the morning for breakfast, as it is fast and convenient to prepare, but others like to take the time and effort to make cooked cereal.
–Since the ice-storm, there have been almost no birds flying around the house, and I wonder if they were all killed by the cold and buried under the ice.
–Under the bright light of the mid-afternoon sun, the tops of the willow tree are a quietly beautiful shade of yellow, so far removed in spirit from the ghostly grey of evening.