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。

安娜·卡列尼娜

世上的一切都是污秽丑恶的。

新千年文学备忘录

珀尔修斯的力量永远来自他拒绝直视，但不是拒绝他注定要生活于其中的现实。他随身携带着这现实，把它当作他的特殊负担来接受。

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.