" I could offer any number of reasons. I could talk eloquently on the subject for days on end, until my tongue was sore, only to find there was still more to say, yet more answers clamoring for attention. Experience tells me that too many answers are the same as none at all; perhaps only one can constitute a real answer. So I will supply just a single explanation, one that I think may be the most important; whether it is the true answer is impossible to know.

It's your experience while growing up, I believe, that shapes the direction of your life. A basic image of the world is planted deep in your mind, and then, like a document in a copy machine, it keeps being reprinted again and again throughout your formative years. Once you reach adulthood, whether you're successful or not, whatever you accomplish can only partially revise that most basic image; it will never be entirely transformed. Naturally some revise the image more and some revise it less. Mao Zedong, I'm sure, made more revisions than I have done. "

― Yu Hua