The nightmare thought is that frightening people is the best way to get work out of them, and that somehow the crueler the environment, the more people will rise to the challenge. You want to think, who would you like as your ideal dad? And your ideal dad is somebody who is tough but gentle. And it's a very hard line to make. We need fathers, as it were, the exemplary father figures in society, avoiding the two extremes, which is the authoritarian disciplinarian on the one hand, and on the other, the lax, no-rules option.

The purpose of fiction is to take you out of your own life and make you aware of other lives.

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

做好了官，有余力就要学习，学习好了，有余力就去做官。

一个善待别人的人，别人也会善待你。《孟子》中也说“爱人者，人恒爱之；敬人者，人恒敬之”，爱别人的人，别人也会爱他；尊敬别人的人，别人也会尊敬他。

The world is a machine, and we are its broken parts.

过去是一张地图，显示我们曾去过哪里。