Art of Writing: Lu Chi's Wen Fu Book

"Perhaps some day the secret of this most intricate art may be entirely mastered. In making an axe handle by cutting wood with an axe, the model is indeed near at hand. But the adaptability of the hand to the ever-changing circumstances and impulses in the process of creation is such as words can hardly explain."



"When the search succeeds, feeling, at first but a glimmer, will gradually gather into full luminosity, when all objects thus lit up glow as if each the other's light reflects. Drip-drops are distilled afresh from a sea of words since time out of mind, as quintessence that savors of all the aroma of the Six Arts."



"Thus the poet will have mustered what for a hundred generations awaited his brush, creating music that has waited unheard for a thousand ages."


"The poet's mind toils between substance and the void. Every detail in high and low relief he seeks to perfect, so that the form, although it may transcend the dictates of compasses and ruler, shall be the paragon of resemblance to all shapes and features imitated."