"Five volumes of sheer bliss. There’s almost nothing fiction can offer that isn’t in this book: an 18th Century, post-modern, Zen, worldly, otherworldly, gorgeous, funny, sorrowful, gripping, saga of a large, staggeringly wealthy Qin Dynasty family. Stunningly well translated, (the first three volumes by David Hawkes, the final two by John Minford, Hawkes’ son-in-law). It takes a while (or it did me) to keep the many, many characters straight, but it’s definitely worth the trouble."

"Preston Sturges at his best. This was the first of his films I ever saw, in a revival at the Regency in New York, and it was a revelation. You’ve never heard dialogue so funny or move so fast. Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda are hysterical, and it has maybe my favorite line ever in a movie—Fonda asks a fancy old society lady at a dinner party if he’s missed anything. She says, “The fish was a poem.”"