碎的念

李翊云的亲妈有点残忍。

Two years after Vincent died, she informed me that there was some karma in my losing a child: I had failed to return her love for me.)

《Things in Nature Merely Grow》 — Yiyun Li

在李翊云儿子James身上找到了共鸣，我也喜欢把手机界面设成我正在学习的语言。

James would teach himself several languages: Welsh, German, Romanian, and Russian, on top of Spanish, Italian, and Japanese, the languages he took at school. His phone, I once found out by accident, was set in Lithuanian

《Things in Nature Merely Grow》 — Yiyun Li

把直觉付诸文字，就像把蝴蝶做成标本。

I avoid putting my intuitions into words, which would be pinning a butterfly on a specimen board so as to claim the certainty of possession.

《Things in Nature Merely Grow》 — Yiyun Li

The most crushiating thing in life is your most beloved ones betray you when you need it most.

And I should add: my mother was in the conference room that day and laughed and jeered along with her colleagues. But when I got home from school that evening, her wrath was a story that I prefer not to remember.

《Things in Nature Merely Grow》 — Yiyun Li

That pepper spray is among the objects that have outlived Vincent. Sometimes I go into his room and take a look at it.

《Things in Nature Merely Grow》 — Yiyun Li

非常震撼的一句话。

Every semester, then and later, I would teach Grace Paley’s story “Friends,” and every time I would point out a passage to my students, though I doubt many of them truly understood its weight. An older woman, reminiscing about her daughter’s death, says to her friends: “You know the night Abby died, when the police called me and told me? That was my first night’s sleep in two years. I knew where she was.”

《Things in Nature Merely Grow》 — Yiyun Li

“Our life is never going to be all right again, but we are doing all right.”

《Things in Nature Merely Grow》 — Yiyun Li

并无直接利益诉求的楚元王刘交却和想当皇帝的齐王刘襄联合“出兵反汉”，齐楚联军的兵锋一路杀到了荥阳，这是否与吕后在临终前最后一次触动刘交“儒者礼法”的神经有关，我们不得而知，却并不能排除这一可能性。

《汉瓦：西汉王朝洪业启示录》 — 刘三解

过去的掠夺有了一个更好听的名字——税收。——托马斯·潘恩(Thomas Paine)[插图]一个民族的精神风貌、文明程度、社会结构以及政策可能酿成的行为方式，所有这些甚至更多，都记录在它的财政史中。——约瑟夫·熊彼特(Joseph Schumpeter)

《税的荒唐与智慧：历史上的税收故事》 — [美]乔尔·斯莱姆罗德 [美]迈克尔·基恩

激起英国1381年农民起义的税收并不是真正意义上的人头税；导致美国波士顿茶党兴起的并非增税，而是减税。

《税的荒唐与智慧：历史上的税收故事》 — [美]乔尔·斯莱姆罗德 [美]迈克尔·基恩

这次真怪原生家庭。

Sometimes my mother recruited my sister into the game, saying that there was no point in loving me anymore because that perfect twin was in the next room. And then they would go away together, my mother laughing and talking vividly about the other girl. To this day I remember my dumbfounded panic.

《Things in Nature Merely Grow》 — Yiyun Li

I’ve in the past quoted Montaigne: “To philosophize is to learn to die.

《Things in Nature Merely Grow》 — Yiyun Li

A few days after James’s death, I told my friend Elizabeth, half-jokingly, that I would write a self-help book about radical acceptance. Radical acceptance was what sustained me then.

《Things in Nature Merely Grow》 — Yiyun Li

最大的声响，是沉默。

But my husband is a private person, and I believe in Marianne Moore’s words: “The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; / not in silence, but restraint.”

《Things in Nature Merely Grow》 — Yiyun Li

生活的残酷之处在于，下手总是没轻没重，不理会是不是陈词滥调或套路。

Vincent died on the day we put down the deposit for the house. Deposit, death, in that order, four hours apart. I would never have put those two things on the same day in a novel. In writing fiction, one avoids coincidences like that, which offer convenient metaphor, shoddy poignancy, and unearned drama. Life, however, does not follow a novelist’s discipline. Fiction, one suspects, is tamer than life.

《Things in Nature Merely Grow》 — Yiyun Li

在崇祯朝，3/4的高级官僚来自南方；而在1644年，2/3的归降者是北方人。[插图]这种比例的倒转，主要在于山东的大量降人，1644年投降的“贰臣”中有1/4来自山东

《洪业：清朝开国史》 — 魏斐德

史可法也持乐观态度，他极力主张利用清军的力量去消灭主要的敌人大顺军。他认为杀害先帝的流贼比刚刚入关占领中原的夷狄更为危险。

《洪业：清朝开国史》 — 魏斐德