Elsa Hart Quotes

. . . [H]e was beginning to see the face of the killer, as yet a shadowy form that crept through the alleys of memory and imagination, narrow and lantern lit like Dayan's labyrinthine streets. It stared at him, this visage whose features he could almost trace.
It was as maddening as holding a book to a twilit window, seeing the black ink of words across the page but finding them unreadable, as if he was again a child and the characters were only dancing insects with no meaning. Li Du shuddered a little as the figure in his mind backed slowly out of sight again, to wander freely and unobserved in the back corners of his thoughts." - p 221-222

The sun set and the moon rose parchment yellow, the marks on its surface like traces of lead someone had tried to rub away. Li Du walked alone on the path to the mountain. A painter could have captured it well: a defeated curve of shoulders at odds with a determined stride against a mountain that filled the sky." - p 83

For those in power, facts were merely materials that could be used, modified, or ignored for the purpose of maintaining control.