How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #1
Then I reflected that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century follows century, and things happen only in the present. (4)
Huh. That's an interesting theory. If Yu Tsun thinks of himself as living in a constant present, does that mean he doesn't need to think about the consequences of his actions?
Quote #2
I thought of a maze of mazes, of a sinuous, ever growing maze which would take in both past and future and would somehow involve the stars. (19)
The maze that Yu Tsun envisions starts off as spatial (related to space) and becomes temporal (related to time). It seems he's primed to understand Dr. Albert's interpretation of Ts'ui Pen's novel.
Quote #3
For an undetermined period of time I felt myself cut off from the world, an abstract spectator.... Going down the gently sloping road I could not feel fatigue. The evening was at once intimate and infinite. (20)
Wandering through the maze of paths that lead to Dr. Albert's house, Yu Tsun loses his sense of time. The maze seems to represent an infinite space in which time stands still.
Quote #4
"I leave to various future times, but not to all, my garden of forking paths." (42)
This phrase – the key to understanding Ts'ui Pen's novel – is so significant that it actually occurs twice in the story.
Quote #5
"Differing from Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not think of time as absolute and uniform. He believed it an infinite series of times, in a dizzily growing, ever spreading network of diverging, converging and parallel times." (57)
Who else do we know who debated Newton's conception of time as absolute and uniform? Oh yeah, Einstein. It's easy to see why this story sparked the imagination of more than one quantum physicist.
Quote #6
"This web of time – the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries – embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not." (57)
Dr. Albert really spells it out for Yu Tsun in this quote. The web of time is so infinite that we don't even exist in most of them.
Quote #7
Once again I sensed the pullulation of which I have already spoken. It seemed to me that the dew-damp garden surrounding the house was infinitely saturated with invisible people. All were Albert and myself, secretive, busy and multiform in other dimensions of time. (60)
Is this really happening, or are these invisible people merely a figment of Yu Tsun's imagination? Either way, it's an example of how the abstract theory of Ts'ui Pen's book starts to invade the fabric of the story. Ts'ui Pen's philosophy becomes real to Yu Tsun.