Cao Xueqin citations

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (c. 1760), Chapter 1

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (c. 1760), Chapter 5

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (c. 1760), Chapter 5

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (c. 1760), Chapter 5

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (c. 1760), Chapter 2

Cao Xueqin, as quoted in the introduction attributed to his younger brother (Cao Tangcun) to the first chapter of Dream of the Red Chamber, present in the jiaxu (1754) version (the earliest-known manuscript copy of the novel), translated by David Hawkes in The Story of the Stone: The Golden Days (Penguin, 1973), pp. 20–21

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (c. 1760), Chapter 27

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (c. 1760), Chapter 5

Dream of the Red Chamber (c. 1760)

(zh-TW) 字字看來皆是血，十年辛苦不尋常 。

Red Inkstone, couplet in the preface to Dream of the Red Chamber, 1754 Jiaxu manuscript (甲戌本); quoted in Zhou Ruchang's Between Noble and Humble, trans. Liangmei Bao (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), p. 181.
Couplet in the preface to Dream of the Red Chamber, 1754 Jiaxu manuscript (甲戌本); the couplet is "generally considered to be written by Cao Xueqin" according to Wong Kwok-pun in Dreaming across Languages and Cultures (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), footnote on p. 71, but Zhou Ruchang attributes it to Red Inkstone in Between Noble and Humble, trans. Liangmei Bao (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), p. 181. note: Variant translations: note: Every word [in the novel] which one looks at is a drop of blood. The ten years ' painstaking labour is no commonplace.
Source: From On The Red Chamber Dream by Shichang Wu (Clarendon Press, 1961), p. 24