以下文章摘自原书序

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　　" When the good pictures come, we hope they tell the truths, but truths 'told slant,' just as Emily Dickinson commanded. We are spinning story of what it is to grow up.It's a complicated story and sometimes we try to take on the grand themes: anger, love, death, sensuality, and beauty. But we tell it all without fear and without shame.
　　
　　Memory is the primary instrument, the inexhaustible nutrient source;these photographs open doors into the past but they also allow a look into the future.In Samuel Beckett's Endgame, Hamm tells a story about visiting a madman in his cell. Hamm dragged him to the window and exhorted:'Look! There! All that rising corn! And there! Look! The sails of the herring fleet! All that loveliness!' But the madman turned away. All he'd seen were ashes.
　　
　　There's the paradox:we see the beauty and we see the dark side of things; the cornfields and the full sails, but the ashes, as well. The Japanese have a word for this dual perception: mono no aware.It means somethings like 'beauty tinged with sadness.' How is it that we must hold what we love tight to us, against our very bones, knowing we must also, when the time comes, let it go?
　　
　　For me, those pointed lessons of impermanence are soften by the unchanging scape of my life, the durable realities. The conflict produces an odd kind of vitality, just as the madman's despair reveals a beguiling discovery.I find contained within the vertiginous deceit of time its vexing opportunities and sweet human persistence.
　　
　　In this confluence of past and future, reality and symbol, are Emmett, Jessie, and Virginia.Their strength and confidence , there to be seen in their eyes, are compelling - for nothing is so seductive as a gift casually possessed.They are substantial; their green present in irreducibly complex. The withering perspective of the past, the predictable treacheries of the future; for the moment, those familiar complications of time all play harmlessly around them as dancing shadows beneath the great oak. "
　　 ------- SALLY MANN