- L'empereur: You ask me what you have done, Wang-Fô. As others' poison finds its way into us through our nine openings, to confront you with the wrongs you have done, I have to tell you my life story.
- [last lines]
- Ling: [referring to the emperor and his court] They're not the kind of people to loose themselves in a painting.
- [first lines]
- Ling: I met Wang-Fô one night in a tavern. The old painter had been drinking and the alcohol loosened an otherwise taciturn tongue. Wang-Fô talked as if silence were a wall and words were shapes designed to cover it.
- L'empereur: You lied to me Wang-Fô, you hoary imposter. The world is just a mass of confused blotches, thrown at a canvas by an insane painter and constantly obliterated by our tears.
- Ling: We traveled light because my master likes the images of things and not the things themselves. We were poor and exchanged paintings for a little food, but in my bag were snow-covered mountains, rivers in springtime, and the faces of the summer moon.