你的孤独，虽败犹荣

有些承诺如一根针，毫无重量，却凛冽锐利，能直挺挺地插进每个人心里，伤口细微到毫无疼痛。在时间的流淌与社会的打磨之后，伤疤和老茧交错缝合，众生坎壈，任谁都忘记了这句话的出处，我们举着酒杯，脸色泛红，20岁出头的男男女女们，谁又能想到十年之后自己的命运会如何纠葛呢 毕业

最好金龟换酒

于我而言，达到内心平静的窍门其实是一种生活态度：不仅要满足于你所拥有的东西，还要满意于那些你并不拥有的东西。从拉丁美洲人们身上，我领悟到了这点。一路上我亲眼目睹了那么多的贫穷和不公，可人们仍以最大的乐观和热情投入生活，从容地在那里尽其性命之理。很多人也常常接触外国游客，知道外面的世界有多精彩，知道对方手机的价格是自己一年的收入，可他们并不因此生出戾气，照样心平气和，照样鼓盆而歌。我觉得这并非源于“富贵于我如浮云”的冲淡胸襟，而是他们长期生活在自然中的结果。

流离火

如果不是因为寂寞，我们的生命里原本不需要那么多不相干的人。

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.