Frustrated, said 司馬遷

"I am frustrated," Sima Qian once said, "that my heart has that which it has not completely expressed."

"As a man who had suffered much, and who believed that all distinguished literature is born in suffering, the Han historian not only assembled and attempted to make sense from the abundant texts of the past, but also poured out sentiments from a heart shaped by a curious and traumatic series of personal events."

(Stephen Durrant, 1995)