乖，摸摸头

因果。因果最大。因、缘、果。因缘果报，因机缘果。因无缘，则不果，机不投，因不果。因，主因；缘，助缘；机，通积；果，结果。因果相随，机缘自然，时机不到，因缘不生……如此使然。世间之因果、出世间之因果、迷界之因果、悟界之因果……莫不如此。

我们内心的冲突

不只注意那些让他预见失败的因素，还要注意那些让他始终害怕失败的因素

渴望生活

“他当然是疯了。可你有什么办法？所有的艺术家都是疯子。这是他们身上最好的东西。我喜欢他们这种样子。有时候，我恨不得自己也疯了才好！39;但凡优秀的人都免不了是个半疯！39;你知道这话出自谁人知口吗？亚里士多德①，那就是说这个话的人。”

如何读，为什么读

Melville was not a Christian, and tended to identify with the ancient Gnostic heresy, in which the creator God of this world is a bungler and impostor, while the true God, called the Stranger or Alien God, is exiled somewhere in the outer regions of the cosmos.Early, major Faulkner is a kind of unknowing Gnostic; West, Pynchon, and McCarthy in their different ways are very knowing indeed. My subject is how to read their best fiction, and why, and not how to instruct my own readers in ancient heterodoxies (at least not here!), but the first sequence of four novels that I have chosen, in the wake of Melville, achieve their negative splendors in modes parallel to Gnostic visions, as we will see.