飞机上看王尔德的The Picture of Dorian Gray——我出门总会为带什么书纠结一会儿，于是干脆随机选择。带这本书只是因为它很薄，正赶上了随行的机会。

前言就是一篇妙文：艺术家创造美，批评家把对美的感觉转写成别的形态或材料。批评是一种自我写照，从美中看到丑的人，本身就腐烂不堪了；从美发现美的人才有希望，对他们来说，美就是美……

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.  To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.  The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. 
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.  This is a fault. 
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.  They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty. 
…… ……

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. 

All art is quite useless.

王老师说的美，与道林格雷从他的画像看到的美一样，是没有灵魂的。如果我们想从人生和道德来看，恐怕就成了王老所说的corrupt without charming——那该怎么看呢？学他最后那句话：“一切艺术都是没用的”。没有灵魂的画像，才能表现他的纯粹，至于结局嘛，当然和一切纯粹的东西一样……

为格雷画像并成为他的崇拜者的画家，在书里说过一句很妙的话：

Dorian Gray is to me simply a motive in art. You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him. He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there. He is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours. That is all.

这样看来，格雷的美，在他的画里也是一种虚幻，若有若无，无形胜于有形，可以幻化成任何形式和色彩……