River of Stars

There are so many stories, she thinks, and most of them end up lost.

We are not gods. We make mistakes. We do not live very long. Sometimes someone grinds ink, mixes it with water, arranges paper, takes up a brush to record our time, our days, and we are given another life in those words.

Some writers later, describing the events of that night and day, wrote that Wan'yen of the Altai had seen a spirit-dragon of the river and become afraid. Writers do that sort of thing. They like dragons in their tales.

Lazy poets try to elicit a reader's response with words designed to tug at the heart.

He wasn't a poet, not everyone is.

A writer’s brush is a warrior’s bow, the letters it shapes are arrows that must hit the mark on the page. The calligrapher is an archer, or a general on a battlefield. Someone wrote that long ago. She feels that way this morning. She is at war.

He didn't look back but he knew his wife and his brother's wife, all the women of the house, would be flying, as if into battle, to make East Slope as ready as it could ever be for what had arrived.

You're too clever to be a soldier." Then she shook her head. "Don't say it. I know. We need our soldiers to be clever. I do know." "Thank you," he murmured. "You can do all of the conversation. Make it easier for me.

It had taken skill, tact, an ability to choose friends well, and a great deal of luck

Ambitions and dreams put you at a drinking table with unexpected companions. Cups were filled and refilled, making you drunk with the illusion of changing the world.

You’d never killed anyone. Then you had.

I cannot speak for those who come after, or what the world will be. We are not made that way.

It is not easy, she thinks, to make your way in the world while insisting on a new path.

It was different, though, knowing something in your thoughts and then hearing it confirmed, made real, planted in the world like a tree

Not every man or woman sailing down the river will be a figure of force or significance. Some are merely in the boat with all of us.

It had taken skill, tact, an ability to choose friends well, and a great deal of luck... Luck was always part of it, one way or another

Lin Kuo himself would have said that his legacy was his daughter. Or no. He’d have believed that, but never voiced the thought, for fear of putting a burden of such weight upon her shoulders, which would be an improper thing to do to anyone, let alone a child so dearly loved from the beginning of her days to the end of his.