Rice Wine
When you write in prose, you cook the rice. When you write poetry,
you turn rice into rice wine. Cooked rice doesn't change its shape, but
rice wine changes both in quality and shape. Cooked rice makes one full
so one can live out one's life span . . . wine, on the other hand, makes
one drunk, makes the sad happy, and the happy sad. Its effect is
sublimely beyond explanation.
- Wu Qiao