今风尘碌碌，一事无成。忽念及当日所有之女子，一一细考较去，觉其行止见识，皆出于我之上。何我堂堂之须眉，诚不若彼裙钗哉？实愧则有余，悔又无益之 — Cao Xueqin

"Ostensibly, [Cao Xueqin] has written a Taoist or Zen Buddhist comedy, showing mankinds hopeless involvement in desire and pain and the liberation of at least a few select individuals besides the hero. But only ostensibly, because the reader cannot but feel that the reality of suffering as depicted in the novel stirs far deeper layers of his being than the reality of Taoist wisdom; he cannot but respond to the authors vast sympathy for young and old, innocent and scheming, self-denying and self-indulgent. [...] In devoting his creative career to tracing the history of Baoyu and the Jia clan, Cao Xueqin is therefore the tragic artist caught between nostalgia for, and tormented determination to seek liberation from, the world of red dust."

"Cao Xueqin is a master of language. His prose is so exquisite and aesthetically pleasing that it almost attains perfection in every way."

"Its a tragedy that a lot of people know more about Shakespeare than about Cao Xueqin."

"Wherever he was, he made it spring."

"Proud bones such as yours the world finds rare; These are the crags of a true eccentric. You wield your brush like a roof beam, propelled by wine; From out your bosom pour rugged rocks."

"The idea that the worldlings reality is illusion and that life itself is a dream from which we shall eventually awake is of course a Buddhist one; but in Xueqins hands it becomes a poetical means of demonstrating that his characters are both creatures of his imagination and at the same time the real companions of his golden youth. To that extent it can be thought of as a literary device rather than as a deeply held philosophy, though it is really both."