Durian Quotes

All experience adds up to a life lived as only you could. I feel sure the day will come when you can say: this is my life.

People’s lives never stay the same colour forever. There are times when the colour of life changes completely.

I began to understand that we were born in order to see and listen to the world. And that's all this world wants of us. It doesn't matter that I was never a teacher or a member of the workforce, my life had meaning.

If all you ever see is reality, you just want to die.

If I were not here, this full moon would not be here. Neither would the trees. Or the wind. If my view of the world disappears, then everything that I see disappears too. It’s as simple as that.

If all you ever see is reality, you just want to die. The only way to get over barriers, she said, is to live in the spirit of already being over them.

It’s my belief that everything in this world has its own language. We have the ability to open up our ears and minds to anything and everything. That could be someone walking down the street, or it could be the sunshine or the wind.

When I hear stars whispering at night I feel part of the eternal flow of time.

Some lives are all too brief, while others are a continual struggle. I couldn’t help thinking that it was a brutal assessment of people’s lives to employ usefulness to society as a yardstick by which to measure their value.

That's why I made confectionery. I made sweet things for all those who lived with the sadness of loss. And that's how I was able to live out my life.

The world hasn’t changed. It’s just as cruel as it always was.

I believed that a life has no value if a person is not a useful member of society. I was convinced that humans are born in order to be of service to the world and to others.

She said that was the only way for us to live, to be like the poets.

Anyone is capable of making a positive contribution to the world through simple observation, irrespective of circumstance.

J'ai toujours fait des gâteaux. Parce que sinon, la vie était trop dure. Faire des gâteaux, c'était un défi, et un combat.

I know you may not be able to hear anything now, even if you try, but please don't give up. I fee sure that one day you will find whatever it is you seek, and that the spark that leads to it will come from hearing some kind of voice. People's lives never stay the same colour forever. There are times when the colour of life changes completely.

All experience adds up to a life lived as only you could. I feel sure the day will come when you can say: this is my life. You may never become a writer or a master cook, but I do believe there will be a time when you can stand tall as yourself in your own unique way.

It's just good hospitality,' Tokue countered. ‘For the customers?' ‘No. The beans.' ‘The beans?' ‘Because they came all the way from Canada. For us.

Are you telling me to fire someone who’s not sick, just because she was in the past?

The first time she saw the boy across the classroom, Ah Lee knew she was in love because she tasted durian on her tongue.

I’d like to get hold of the gods – if there really are any – and give them a good clout for all they put us through.

We are born in order to see and listen to the world.

I don’t want to disappoint you, but Toku herself said at the time that she couldn’t actually hear the voices of beans. But if you live in the belief that they can be heard, then someday you might be able to hear them. She said that was the only way for us to live, to be like the poets. That’s what she said. If all you ever see is reality, you just want to die. The only way to get over barriers, she said, is to live in the spirit of already being over them.

We were born in order to see and listen to the world.’ It’s a powerful notion, with the potential to subtly reshape our view of everything.

She said that was the only way for us to live, to be like the poets. That's what she said. If all you ever see is reality, you just want to die. The only way to get over barriers, she said, is to live in the spirit of already being over them.

The pain also gets to you. That was another thing. It goes on and on, and some people choose to die. I thought I'd reached my limit. But for some reason I survived. And then Toku said to me, let's make confectionery. We'll keep going together, she said.

When I was little I didn't have any special dream about what I wanted to do when I grew up. It was wartime, and we were all more preoccupied by a vague kind of anxiety about simply staying alive.

I try to live a blameless life, but am crushed at times by peoples’ lack of understanding. Sometimes you just have to use your wits.

It's my belief that everything in this world has it's own language.

In the midst of darkness and a struggle we had no hope of winning, I held on to this one thing – the fact of our humanity – and I was proud of it.

sebagian orang mendapatkan mukti/mulia dengan mudah, seperti durian runtuh dari langit. Tapi ada juga yang mendapatkannya dengan susah payah dan jungkir balik

I suppose that rumours must have spread about me, and you are probably still having a hard time as a result. If that’s the case, I made a mistake in not quitting sooner than I did. I try to live a blameless life, but am crushed at times by peoples’ lack of understanding. Sometimes you just have to use your wits. That’s something else I should have told you.

I Listened to the birds that visited Tenshoen, and the insects, trees, grass and flowers. To the wind, rain and light. And to the moon. I believe they all have voices. I can easily spend a whole day Listening to them. When I am in the woods at Tenshoen the whole world is there too. When I hear stars whispering at night I feel part of the eternal flow of time.

It was too late. By the time I was told that I could go out into society for the first time in decades and start over, it was much too difficult. If I had become free twenty years earlier I might have managed to start a new life outside. There were many of us like that, in our sixties and seventies, for whom it was too late. We discovered that once we experienced the joy of being out in the world and free again, the greater the happiness, the more we felt the pain of lost time and lives that could never be returned.

The stories surrounding eating durians remind us that literature should incorporate low culture, bringing it closer to lived reality. These legends come not from the pens of the elite, but are assembled from the words of the masses, both written and spoken, passed from one person to another—the only way to create a text this deep and compelling.

We were born in order to see and listen to the world.

there will be a time when you can stand tall as yourself in your own unique way.

If all you ever see is reality, you just want to die. The only way to get ove barriers, she said, is to live in the spirit of already being over them.

The beans did their best.

People's lives never stay the same colour forever. There are times when the colour of life changes completely.

Time had passed quickly while they poured out their grief. The sun’s rays were now infused with a deep red radiance that played over the grass.

It’s up to you now – just do what you want. Have confidence in yourself.

I first entered the sanatorium, then ten years later, twenty years later, thirty years later, and now I'm approaching the end, I can see how different the colour of my days were at each stage.

I am writing this on a computer that I can’t imagine living without. This is an alarming thought, the extent to which I have organised my life around a metal box full of wires (and, via the Internet, to many other metal boxes full of wires). Someone told me most of the Internet is stored in a warehouse somewhere in North Carolina. I don’t know enough about technology to gauge if this is true, but it made me realise how little I actually understand about the world I inhabit. The world of Dr Wong’s childhood was significantly smaller than mine, but he understood every square inch of it.

I remember it clearly. It was a night of the full moon, and I was walking alone in the woods. By then I had already begun Listening to the whispers of trees, and to the voices of insects and birds. On this night, the moon cast its pale, brilliant light on everything around me, and energy seemed to radiate from trees swaying in the wind. While I was alone on that path in the woods, I came face-to-face with the moon. And oh, what a beautiful moon it was! I was enchanted. It made me forget everything I had suffered ... The next thing, I thought I heard a voice that sounded very much like the moon whispering to me. It said: I wanted you to see me. That's why I shine like this. From then on I began to see everything differently. If I were not here, this full moon would not be here. Neither would the trees. Or the wind. If my view of the world disappears, then everything that I see disappears too. It's as simple as that. ...This idea changed me. I began to understand that we were born in order to see and listen to the world. And that's all this world wants of us. My life had meaning.

I can't tell you how many times I wished I were dead. Deep down, I believed that a life has no value if a person is not a useful member of society. I was convinced that humans are born in order to be of service to the world and to others.

I can’t tell you how many times I wished I were dead. Deep down, I believed that a life has no value if a person is not a useful member of society. I was convinced that humans are born in order to be of service to the world and to others.

One thing I can do in Tenshoen is sniff the wind and listen to the murmur of the trees. I pay attention to the language of things in this world that don’t use words. That’s what I call Listening, and I’ve been doing it for sixty years now.

Devine punishment, they called it. Some people even said it was punishment for sins in a previous life, you know. If somebody got it, the police and public-health officials were called in, and then there’d be full-on disinfecting. It was awful for families too they were made to feel terribly ashamed.

And there was something else too, something far more important to Sentaro: Tokue’s sweet bean paste. He was determined to carry on making it, because if he did not, it would disappear from the world. Apart from its merits as bean paste, Sentaro thought of it as testimony to the life of a remarkable woman called Tokue Yoshii.

I know you may not be able to hear anything now, even if you try, but please don’t give up. I feel sure that one day you will find whatever it is you seek, and that the spark that leads to it will come from hearing some kind of voice. People’s lives never stay the same colour forever. There are times when the colour of life changes completely.

I know you may not be able to hear anything now, even if you try, but please don't give up. I feel sure that one day you will find whatever is it you seek, and that the spark that leads to it will come from hearing some kind of voice. People's lives never stay the same colour forever. There are times when the colour of life changes completely.

If I were not here, this full moon would not be here. Neither would the trees. Or the wind. If my view of the world disappears, then everything that I see disappears too. It’s as simple as that. I began to understand that we were born in order to see and listen to the world. And that’s all this world wants of us. It doesn’t matter that I was never a teacher or a member of the workforce, my life had meaning.

If there is a person who has never eaten a tangerine or a durian fruit, however many images or metaphors you give him, you cannot describe to him the reality of those fruits. You can do only one thing: give him a direct experience. You cannot say: “Well, the durian is a little bit like the jackfruit or like a papaya.” You cannot say anything that will describe the experience of a durian fruit. The durian fruit goes beyond all ideas and notions. The same is true of a tangerine. If you have never eaten a tangerine, however much the other person loves you and wants to help you understand what a tangerine tastes like, they will never succeed by describing it. The reality of the tangerine goes beyond ideas. Nirvana is the same; it is the reality that goes beyond ideas. It is because we have ideas about nirvana that we suffer. Direct experience is the only way.

Moreover, Nancy Sinatra was afflicted, as the overwhelming majority of Americans were, with monolingualism. Lana’s richer, more textured version of “Bang Bang” layered English with French and Vietnamese. Bang bang, je ne l’oublierai pas went the last line of the French version, which was echoed by Pham Duy’s Vietnamese version, We will never forget. In the pantheon of classic pop songs from Saigon, this tricolor rendition was one of the most memorable, masterfully weaving together love and violence in the enigmatic story of two lovers who, regardless of having known each other since childhood, or because of knowing each other since childhood, shoot each other down. Bang bang was the sound of memory’s pistol firing into our heads, for we could not forget love, we could not forget war, we could not forget lovers, we could not forget enemies, we could not forget home, and we could not forget Saigon. We could not forget the caramel flavor of iced coffee with coarse sugar; the bowls of noodle soup eaten while squatting on the sidewalk; the strumming of a friend’s guitar while we swayed on hammocks under coconut trees; the football matches played barefoot and shirtless in alleys, squares, parks, and meadows; the pearl chokers of morning mist draped around the mountains; the labial moistness of oysters shucked on a gritty beach; the whisper of a dewy lover saying the most seductive words in our language, anh oi; the rattle of rice being threshed; the workingmen who slept in their cyclos on the streets, kept warm only by the memories of their families; the refugees who slept on every sidewalk of every city; the slow burning of patient mosquito coils; the sweetness and firmness of a mango plucked fresh from its tree; the girls who refused to talk to us and who we only pined for more; the men who had died or disappeared; the streets and homes blown away by bombshells; the streams where we swam naked and laughing; the secret grove where we spied on the nymphs who bathed and splashed with the innocence of the birds; the shadows cast by candlelight on the walls of wattled huts; the atonal tinkle of cowbells on mud roads and country paths; the barking of a hungry dog in an abandoned village; the appetizing reek of the fresh durian one wept to eat; the sight and sound of orphans howling by the dead bodies of their mothers and fathers; the stickiness of one’s shirt by afternoon, the stickiness of one’s lover by the end of lovemaking, the stickiness of our situations; the frantic squealing of pigs running for their lives as villagers gave chase; the hills afire with sunset; the crowned head of dawn rising from the sheets of the sea; the hot grasp of our mother’s hand; and while the list could go on and on and on, the point was simply this: the most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget.

That is why we got booted out. If they could have just squeezed us like an orange and squeezed the juice out, I think the juice would have been squeezed out of us, and all the goodness would have been sucked away. But it was a bit harder, wasn’t it? It was more like the durian. You try and squeeze it, your hand gets hurt. And so they say, “Right, throw out the durian.” But inside the durian is a very useful ingredient, high protein … And we will progress.

The five cells are silky-white within, and are filled with a mass of firm, cream-coloured pulp, containing about three seeds each. This pulp is the eatable part, and its consistence and flavour are indescribable. A rich custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy. It is neither acid nor sweet nor juicy; yet it wants neither of these qualities, for it is in itself perfect. It produces no nausea or other bad effect, and the more you eat of it the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact, to eat Durians is a new sensation worth a voyage to the East to experience.

When I was little I didn't have any special dream about what I wanted to do when I grew up. It was wartime, and we were all more preoccupied by a vague kind of anxiety about simply staying alive. But after I became ill and realized that I would never be able to go out into society again, I started dreaming about what I wanted to be which was hard.

When I first came here the blossoms were out, but it’s a sad sight now,’ she said. ‘The wind’s cold, too.’ ‘I wonder if I’ll see next year’s blossom.’ ‘Of course you will. Tokue, please, will you come and teach me how to make bean paste again?

She said that was the only way for us to live, to be like the poets. That’s what she said. If all you ever see is reality, you just want to die. The only way to get over barriers, she said, is to live in the spirit of already being over them.

I began to understand that we were born in order to see and listen to the world. And that’s all this world wants of us. It doesn’t matter that I was never a teacher or a member of the workforce, my life had meaning.

Anyone who was ever shut up in here has thought that. I’d like to get hold of the gods – if there really are any – and give them a good clout for all they put us through.

When the law changed, for one happy moment we all thought we could go home. But more than a dozen years have passed since then and almost no one has come forward to take us back. The world hasn’t changed. It’s just as cruel as it always was.

They encountered a world, new to both of them, of unfathomable grief and suffering, that had long been buried in darkness.

Moreover, Nancy Sinatra was afflicted, as the overwhelming majority of Americans were, with monolingualism. Lana’s richer, more textured version of “Bang Bang” layered English with French and Vietnamese. Bang bang, je ne l’oublierai pas went the last line of the French version, which was echoed by Pham Duy’s Vietnamese version, We will never forget. In the pantheon of classic pop songs from Saigon, this tricolor rendition was one of the most memorable, masterfully weaving together love and violence in the enigmatic story of two lovers who, regardless of having known each other since childhood, or because of knowing each other since childhood, shoot each other down. Bang bang was the sound of memory’s pistol firing into our heads, for we could not forget love, we could not forget war, we could not forget lovers, we could not forget enemies, we could not forget home, and we could not forget Saigon. We could not forget the caramel flavor of iced coffee with coarse sugar; the bowls of noodle soup eaten while squatting on the sidewalk; the strumming of a friend’s guitar while we swayed on hammocks under coconut trees; the football matches played barefoot and shirtless in alleys, squares, parks, and meadows; the pearl chokers of morning mist draped around the mountains; the labial moistness of oysters shucked on a gritty beach; the whisper of a dewy lover saying the most seductive words in our language, anh oi; the rattle of rice being threshed; the workingmen who slept in their cyclos on the streets, kept warm only by the memories of their families; the refugees who slept on every sidewalk of every city; the slow burning of patient mosquito coils; the sweetness and firmness of a mango plucked fresh from its tree; the girls who refused to talk to us and who we only pined for more; the men who had died or disappeared; the streets and homes blown away by bombshells; the streams where we swam naked and laughing; the secret grove where we spied on the nymphs who bathed and splashed with the innocence of the birds; the shadows cast by candlelight on the walls of wattled huts; the atonal tinkle of cowbells on mud roads and country paths; the barking of a hungry dog in an abandoned village; the appetizing reek of the fresh durian one wept to eat; the sight and sound of orphans howling by the dead bodies of their mothers and fathers; the stickiness of one’s shirt by afternoon, the stickiness of one’s lover by the end of lovemaking, the stickiness of our situations; the frantic squealing of pigs running for their lives as villagers gave chase; the hills afire with sunset; the crowned head of dawn rising from the sheets of the sea; the hot grasp of our mother’s hand; and while the list could go on and on and on, the point was simply this: the most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget. When Lana was finished, the audience clapped, whistled, and stomped, but I sat silent and stunned as she bowed and gracefully withdrew, so disarmed I could not even applaud.

Love is like a durian: judge not its spiky exterior and stinky smell, for its flesh is bittersweet and tasty. And that probably applies to humans as well.

all you ever see is reality, you just want to die. The only way to get over barriers, she said, is to live in the spirit of already being over them.

As they were heading back through the centre of the park again, Sentaro felt a tugging sensation at his back. He turned around and saw the stone cairn at the charnel house. Four thousand souls. Four thousand people who never went home. He felt their eyes boring down on him from above.

But to make someone else happy, you have to understand that person’s needs, suffering, and desires and not assume you know what will make them happy. Ask, “What would make you happy?” THE RIGHT GIFT In Vietnam there is a fruit that many people love called durian.

But who or what would want to torment a girl of only fourteen for the rest of her life? The thought was oppressive. Of course…it had to be the gods who were behind it all. The gods who whispered in her ear that she was better off not being born. The gods who declared she must suffer her whole life. What did Tokue think about life once she understood this? How was she going to live out the rest of it? She was just a girl, quietly sobbing her heart out.

...we were born in order to see and listen to the world. And that’s all this world wants of us.

Kita punya wadah masing-masing yang bisa diisi

Menurutku sekali-kali kita harus mengikuti apa yang kita suka

I’m sure there comes a time for everyone, not just those with Hansen’s disease, when they wonder what the point of life is.

the idea that we have been nurtured by the universe to prove its existence. If there is no single conscious mind capable of doing this, the existence of the universe itself becomes unverifiable.

Like most normal people, I didn't have any M.F.K Fisher quotes memorized. So I selected one of her books at random---well, not random, the one that looked the least valuable---and flipped to a random page. Hoping I'd find something beautiful but decidedly unsexy, maybe about the smell of a mushroom farm or boxes of durian. Where my eyes landed: Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly. Thanks a lot, Mary Frances Kennedy.

The only way to get over barriers, she said, is to live in the spirit of already being over them.

Memories of his mother...She was softly spoken but troubled by anxieties beneath the surface that she could not conceal. Then there were the loud disputes with his father, and arguments with relatives that made her cry and scream. As a child Sentaro had been frightened by these outbursts, that's why he'd wished there could always be cake on the table. Because his mother had a sweet tooth, and whenever they had the sweet things that she liked, such as manju buns or cake, she would be in a good mood and he could also feel at peace. He loved his mother when she smiled and said to him, 'Mm, isn't this delicious, Sen?

I'm embarrassed to say, but I didn't always keep to the straight and narrow. I just bumbled along, not knowing what to do with my life, really. Whatever I did never worked out. At one time I wanted to be a writer. But I never write a word these days. I never became expert in dorayaki either. I'm just a waster.

Instinctively Sentaro tried to anticipate Tokue, and create a space for her words.

He also considered that perhaps the sluggish economy had something to do with it. There were permanently shuttered shops all around them on the street.

The bones of more than 4,000 people are in here. When the law changed, for one happy moment we all thought we could go home. But more than a dozen years have passed since then and almost no one has come forward to take us back. The world hasn't changed. It's just as cruel as it always was.

An image of the cherry tree outside the shop rose in his mind again. No doubt it was proudly blooming again this year, stopping passers-by in their tracks with its glorious cloud of flowers. Petals would be wafting down into the shop. And the school girls who complained about petals in their dorayaki...

She said that was the only way for us to live, to be like poets.

know you may not be able to hear anything now, even if you try, but please don’t give up. I feel sure that one day you will find whatever it is you seek, and that the spark that leads to it will come from hearing some kind of voice. People’s lives never stay the same colour forever. There are times when the colour of life changes completely.

Kami gembira karena bisa berjalan di dunia luar. Namun, semakin besar kegembiraan itu, semakin besar pula kesedihan yang menyerang, mengingat waktu yang telah terenggut dari kami, dan kehidupan yang tak akan pernah kembali. Apakah kau bisa mengerti perasaan ini? Sepulang dari bepergian, semua orang yang ada di sini akan berwajah kelelahan. Bukan hanya lelah secara fisik, mereka juga merasakan kepedihan yang tidak akan sirna.

I think about that hairdresser girl and how everybody in my family is dying. First, my Pa. Then my Ah Ma, now my Teow Teow. My Pa, he was gone when I was eight. He was a durian seller and he got cancer. My Ah Ma got cancer too, and so did my uncle. Me, I plan to stay alive for as long as I can.

Some lives are all too brief, while others are a continual struggle. I couldn't help thinking that it was a brutal assessment of people's lives to employ usefulness to society as a yardstick by which to measure their value.

We discovered that once we experienced the joy of being out in the world and free again, the greater the happiness, the more we felt the pain of lost time and lives that could never be returned.

If I were not here, this full moon would not be here. Neither would the trees. Or the wind. If my view of the world disappears, then everything that I see disappears too.

Bang bang was the sound of memory’s pistol firing into our heads, for we could not forget love, we could not forget war, we could not forget lovers, we could not forget enemies, we could not forget home, and we could not forget Saigon. We could not forget the caramel flavor of iced coffee with coarse sugar; the bowls of noodle soup eaten while squatting on the sidewalk; the strumming of a friend’s guitar while we swayed on hammocks under coconut trees; the football matches played barefoot and shirtless in alleys, squares, parks, and meadows; the pearl chokers of morning mist draped around the mountains; the labial moistness of oysters shucked on a gritty beach; the whisper of a dewy lover saying the most seductive words in our language, anh oi; the rattle of rice being threshed; the workingmen who slept in their cyclos on the streets, kept warm only by the memories of their families; the refugees who slept on every sidewalk of every city; the slow burning of patient mosquito coils; the sweetness and firmness of a mango plucked fresh from its tree; the girls who refused to talk to us and who we only pined for more; the men who had died or disappeared; the streets and homes blown away by bombshells; the streams where we swam naked and laughing; the secret grove where we spied on the nymphs who bathed and splashed with the innocence of the birds; the shadows cast by candlelight on the walls of wattled huts; the atonal tinkle of cowbells on mud roads and country paths; the barking of a hungry dog in an abandoned village; the appetizing reek of the fresh durian one wept to eat; the sight and sound of orphans howling by the dead bodies of their mothers and fathers; the stickiness of one’s shirt by afternoon, the stickiness of one’s lover by the end of lovemaking, the stickiness of our situations; the frantic squealing of pigs running for their lives as villagers gave chase; the hills afire with sunset; the crowned head of dawn rising from the sheets of the sea; the hot grasp of our mother’s hand; and while the list could go on and on and on, the point was simply this: the most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget.

the law changed, for one happy moment we all thought we could go home. But more than a dozen years have passed since then and almost no one has come forward to take us back. The world hasn’t changed. It’s just as cruel as it always was.

That’s maybe why I tried to Listen, because I believe that human beings are living creatures with this capability. When I Listened, I sometimes heard things.

Only adults look while pretending not to. Is that better? Or is it better to ask straight out?

The pain also gets to you. That was another thing. It goes on and on, and some people choose to die. I thought I’d reached my limit.

The pain also gets to you. That was another thing. It goes on and on, and some people choose to die. I thought I’d reached my limit. But for some reason I survived.

HIGHLY BENEFICIAL Banana Blueberry Cherry Durian Fig Guava Mamey apple, mamey sapote Mango Plum Prune NEUTRAL Acai berry Apple Apricot Boysenberry Breadfruit Canang melon Casaba melon Christmas melon Cranberry Crenshaw melon Currant Date Dewberry Elderberry Goji, wolfberry Gooseberry Grape Grapefruit Huckleberry Jackfruit Kumquat Lemon Lime Lingonberry Loganberry Loquat Mangosteen Mulberry Muskmelon Nectarine Noni Papaya Passion fruit Pawpaw Peach Pear Persian melon Persimmon Pineapple Pomegranate Prickly pear Quince Raisin Raspberry Sago palm Spanish melon Star fruit, carambola Strawberry Watermelon Youngberry AVOID Asian pear Avocado Bitter melon Blackberry Cantaloupe Coconut meat Honeydew melon Kiwi Litchi/lychee Orange Plantain Tangerine

The world isn’t an easy place

Can you imagine what it’s like for someone who can’t see or feel, to taste something sweet?

It’s my belief that everything in this world has its own language. We have the ability to open up our ears and minds to anything and everything.