Tan Twan Eng Quotes

For what is a person without memories? A ghost, trapped between worlds, without an identity, with no future, no past.

Memory is like patches of sunlight in an overcast valley, shifting with the movement of the clouds. Now and then the light will fall on a particular point in time, illuminating it for a moment before the wind seals up the gap, and the world is in shadows again.

The palest ink will endure beyond the memories of man

To have memories, happy or sorrowful, is a blessing, for it shows we have lived our lives without reservation.

Accept that there are things in this world we can never explain and life will be understandable. That is the irony of life. It is also the beauty of it.

Are all of us the same, I wonder, navigating our lives by interpreting the silences between words spoken, analysing the returning echoes of our memory in order to chart the terrain, in order to make sense of the world around us?

The mind forgets, but the heart will always remember. And what is the heart's memory but love itself?

Anything beautiful should be given a name, do you not agree?

That point in time just as the last leaf is about to drop, as the remaining petal is about to fall; that moment captures everything beautiful and sorrowful about life. Mono no aware, the Japanese call it.

Die while I can still remember who I am, who I used to be.

Memories I had locked away have begun to break free, like shards of ice fracturing off an arctic shelf. In sleep, these broken floes drift toward the morning light of remembrance.

We were like two moths around a candle, I thought, circling closer and closer to the flame, waiting to see whose wings would catch fire first.

Before me lies a voyage of a million miles, and my memory is the moonlight I will borrow to illuminate my way.

It begins to rain softly, raising goose-pimples on the pond’s skin.

Feel your body expanding as you breathe: that is where we live, in the moments between each inhalation and exhalation.

Moments in time when the world is changing bring out the best and the worst in people.

A raintree bent towards a window in one side of the bungalow, eavesdropping on the conversations that had taken place inside over years.

I will dance to the music of words, for one more time.

The tree of life is already doomed from the moment it is planted.

Some element in the air between us changed, as though a wind that had been blowing gently had come to an abrupt stillness.

Time did not exist; I had no idea of how many minutes had passed. And what was time but merely a wind that never stopped?

Duty is a concept created by emperors and generals to deceive us into performing their will. Be wary when duty speaks, for it often masks the voice of others.

I had loaded another weight onto his suffering and it hurt me to understand that while one person can never really share the pain of another, they can so easily and so heedlessly add to it.

I have become a collapsing star, pulling everything around it, even the light, into an ever-expanding void. Once I lose all ability to communicate with the world outside myself, nothing will be left but what I remember. My memories will be like a sandbar, cut off from the shore by the incoming tide. In time they will become submerged, inaccessible to me. The prospect terrified me. For what is a person without memories? A ghost, trapped between worlds, without an identity, with no future, no past.

The mind forgets, but the heart will always remember. And what is the heart’s memory but love itself?

A garden is composed of a variety of clocks, Aritomo had once told me. Some of them run faster than the others, and some of them move slower than wee can ever perceive. I only understood this fully long after I had been his apprentice.

It was odd how Aritomo's life seemed to glance off mine; we were like two leaves falling from a tree, touching each other now and again as they spiraled to the forest floor.

I realize that there are fragments of my life that I do not want to lose, if only because I still have not found the knot to tie them up with.

Was this part of the process of growing up, that we finally noticed the people closest to us in a different, clearer light?

The young have hopes and dreams, while the old hold the remains of them in their hands and wonder what has happened to their lives.

Never meet a person’s anger directly. Deflect, distract him, even agree with him. Unbalance his mind, and you can lead him anywhere you want.

The world goes by, the young and the hopeful, all head for their future. Where does that leave us? There is a misconception that we have reached our destinations the moment we grow old, but it is not a well-accepted fact that we are still travelling towards those destinations, still beyond our reach even on the day we close our eyes for the final time.

As with all the principles of aikijutsu, you do not meet the force of the strike head-on. You parry, you step to the side to avoid the blow, your redirect the force and unbalance your opponent. It is the same with the ken, the sword. These principles apply to you daily life as well. Never meet a person’s anger directly. Deflect, distract him, even agree with him. Unbalance his mind, and you can lead him anywhere you want.

What made it worse was that we could never truly share such burdens with even those closest to us. In the end, the mistakes were our own, the consequences to be borne by us alone.

Time seems to overlap, like the shadows of leave pressing down on other leave, layer upon layer.

Anger and sorrow walked with me, joining hands with guilt, the three walls of my prison.

She saw the stubborn set of my face. "I've never felt blessed," I said. "There must be free will to choose. Do you know the poem about the two roads, and the one not taken?" Yes. That has always amused me, because who created the two roads in the first place?" It was a question I had never considered.

One question remained to me. “If a higher level of bujutsu involves fighting with the mind, what then is the very highest level?” He closed his eyes for a while, seeing things he would never show me. “That,” he said, “would be never to fight at all.

That night, side by side, we drifted among the galaxies of sea-stars, while far, far above us the asterisks of light marked out the footnotes on the page of eternity.

Time is eating away my memory. Time, and this illness, this trespasser in my brain.

In return for surrendering to the throw, you are given the gift of flight,’ he said.

It only takes one letter of the alphabet to change reason to treason.

The practice of designing gardens had originated in the temples of China, where the work was done by monks. Gardens were created to approximate the idea of a paradise in the afterlife.

I feel that when I travel I can change myself a little, and I return from a journey not quite the same self I was.

And what was time but merely a wind that never stopped?

I was you before you were born and you will be me after I am gone. That is the meaning of family.

Be wary when duty speaks, for it often masks the voice of others. Others who do not have your interests at heart.

Yes, I could say that I had lived my life, if not to the full then at least almost to the brim. What more could one ask? Rare is the person whose life overflows.

When you are lost, in this world or on the continent of time itself, remember who you have been and you will know who you are. These people were all you, and you are them. I was you before you were born and you will be me after I am gone. That is the meaning of family.” He

You’ve forgiven the British?” He subsided into his seat. For a while he was silent, his gaze turned inward. “They couldn’t kill me when we were at war. And they couldn’t kill me when I was in the camp,” he said finally, his voice subdued. “But holding on to my hatred for forty-six years . . . that would have killed me.

It is getting dark. In the low mists over the hills, an orange glow broods, as if the trees are on fire. Bats are flooding out from the hundreds of caves that perforate these mountainsides. I watch them plunge into the mists without any hesitation, trusting in the echoes and silences in which they fly. Are all of us the same, I wonder, navigating our lives by interpreting the silences between words spoken, analyzing the returning echoes of our memory in order to chart the terrain, in order to make sense of the world around us?

I lay in bed for a while, listening to the drowsy waves as the light outside changed, the ink of night diluting to dawn.

none of my children—not one—ever took the easy road; that they strove to keep sanity, reason, and compassion alive and burning in these tragic times.

Then you understand that certain things cannot be stopped, that they must be allowed to proceed, regardless of the consequences?

while one person can never really share the pain of another, they can so easily and so heedlessly add to it.

When you are lost in this world, or on the continent of time itself,remember who you have been and you will know who you are

I have become a collapsing star, pulling everything around it, even the light, into an ever-expanding void.

He stopped, pausing to arrange his words like an ikebana expert with his flowers, shifting, bending, adding, and taking away to achieve the results he desired.

When the First Man and First Woman were banished from their home, Time was also set loose upon the world.

Enlightenment, it is a moment of complete clarity, of pure bliss. At that instant everything will be revealed to you.

Puddles of rainwater glowed like the discarded scales of a dragon.

Complete surrender, but not total abandonment of awareness.

Veins of lightning flared and throbbed behind the wall of clouds, turning the bruised sky pink, and I felt I was being granted glimpses of blood pulsing silently through the ventricles of an immense human heart.

That is what growing old consists of, mostly. One starts giving away items and belongings until only the memories are left. In the end, what else do we really require? I examined her words carefully, and the answer came slowly but without any equivocation. Someone to share those memories with, I said finally, surprising myself.

I am certain it has never been easy, growing up as a child of mixed parentage in this place. But that is your strength. Accept the fact that you are different, that you are of two worlds. And I wish you to remember this when you feel you cannot go on: you are used to the duality of life. You have the ability to bring all of life's disparate elements into a cohesive whole. So use it

Bats are flooding out from the hundreds of caves that perforate these mountainsides. I watch them plunge into the mists without any hesitation, trusting in the echoes and silences in which they fly. Are all of us the same, I wonder, navigating our lives by interpreting the silences between words spoken, analyzing the returning echoes of our memory in order to chart the terrain, in order to make sense of the world around us?

I have lived, I have traveled the world, and now, like a worn-out clock, my life is winding down, the hands slowing, stepping out of the flow of time. If one steps out of time what does one have? Why, the past of course, gradually being worn away by the years as a pebble halted on a riverbed is eroded by the passage of water.

Yes, I could say that I had lived my life, if not to the full then at least almost to the brim. What more could one ask? Rare is the person whose life overflows. I have lived, I have travelled the world, and now, like a worn out clock, my life is winding down, the hands slowing, stepping out of the flow of time. If one steps out of time what does one have?

All of us will be forgotten eventually. Like a wave on the ocean, leaving no trace that it had once existed.' He shook his head. 'We will be remembered through our stories.

My memory is like the moon tonight, full and bright, so bright you can see all its scars.

I am an echo of a sound made a lifetime ago.

The mountains are as I have always remembered them, the first light of the morning melting down their flanks.

The noise of insects sizzled in the air, like fat in a smoking wok.

We're all dying. Day by day; second by second. Every breath that we take drains the limited reserves we are all born with.

I can only teach you the way, that is all. What you do with it and what it does to you, those are beyond my influence.

Spirit expanded, mind unfurling open, heart in flight.

Teacher, as he was called, looked tiny, childlike, and deceptively vulnerable.

I had thought my room was bad enough, but there were even more books in Kon's.

Before me lies a voyage of a million miles, and memory is the moonlight I will borrow to illuminate my way.

To have memories, happy or sorrowful, is a blessing, for it shows we have lived our lives without reservation. Do you not agree?

Why risk drawing the beam of that particular light onto yourself?

Standing there with our heads tilted back to the sky, our faces lit by ancient starlight and the dying fires of those fragments of a planet broken up long ago, I forgot where I was, what I had gone through, what I had lost.

Peter has a lot of faults — we all do — but love makes you overlook them, and try to see what is good. I couldn’t have done that before — at the first sign of weakness I dropped the men I thought I loved. It’s different now.

A deep fear, so constant now in my life, was like a growth in me. When did I let it enter, steal silently in, and latch on to me? There were days I could hardly breathe, as though my blood, coagulated by fear, could not flow.

Are all of us the same, I wonder, navigating our lives by interpreting the silences between words spoken, analyzing the returning echoes of our memory in order to chart the terrain in order to make sense of the world around us?

I am pleased that you train so much on your own. I value the amount of hard work you have put into yourself. You have realized entirely on your own that if you yourself do not put in the work required — for any endeavor! — who else will do it for you?

He wondered what had mesmerised her down there in the deep last night. Fearing the worst when she did not resurface, he had dived in after her and had found her far below, enclosed in a bulb of dimming, wavering light, a lantern adrift in the currents of the sea.

Every night, after Robert had retired to his bedroom, I would lie on the patch of kweek grass in the garden, searching the night sky with my field glasses, a thrill bolting through me whenever I saw a dislodged star streaking across the heavens. I learned their names and their shapes: the Southern Cross; Auriga; Coma Berenices; Horologium; Orion; Circinus; Apus; Andromeda. I soon knew them all, these constellations in the night sky, constellations that had, since the beginning of the world, been sinking into the earth each morning, to rise again the next night.

Je kunt de seizoenen zien als stukjes van de mooiste, transparantste zijde in verschillende kleuren. Los van elkaar zijn ze mooi, maar leg de een boven op de ander, al zijn het alleen maar de randen, en er komt iets speciaals tot stand. Dat geldt ook voor de smalle strook tijd waarin het begin van het ene seizoen het eind van een ander overlapt.

Yggdrasil is the Tree of Life,’ he says. ‘Its branches cover the world and stretch up to the sky. But it has only three roots. One is submerged in the waters of the Pool of Knowledge. Another in fire. The last root is being devoured by a terrible creature. When two of its roots have been consumed by fire and beast, the tree will fall, and eternal darkness will spread across the world.

All at once we were swimming in cobalt fire, every kick and stroke igniting the tempests of plankton swirling around us. I laughed, the sound rupturing the quiet, windless night, and then Willie joined me as well. We dunked our heads under the blazing sea and came up again, spluttering fire from our lips. Rivulets of blue flames streamed down Willie’s hair, his face. I touched my own cheek, felt it glowing; I scooped up handfuls of the sea, marvelling at the fire-snakes writhing down my arms. We grinned at each other with stupid, childlike glee. Our naked bodies were visible in the water, but what was there to be embarrassed about? We were nothing more than two insects preserved in amber, after all. Whenever the fire dimmed, we would scissor our legs and swing our arms, stoking the watery furnace. ‘If we flapped our limbs hard and fast and long enough,’ I said to Willie, ‘do you think we could light up the entire ocean?

Money's the sixth sense. If you don't have it, you can't make … the most of the other five.

You know what … money really is? Money’s the sixth sense. If you don’t have it, you can’t make … the most of the other five.

Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt’.

The island was named Prince of Wales Island, but eventually came to be known as Penang.

A tea master horrified his pupils by planting a hedge in his garden, blocking the view of the Inland Sea for which his school was famous,' I said, half to myself. 'He left only a gap in the hedge and set a basin before it. Anyone drinking from it would have to bend down and look at the sea through the hole.' 'Why do you think he planted the hedge to block out the famous view?' 'Tominaga explained it to me but I've only just really understood it now - the effect of seeing the view is much more powerful than if the sea has not been obstructed.

We are like every single plant and stone and view in the garden, I thought, the distance between one another carefully measured.

One day you will realise that there is no wind, and the flag does not move," he said. "It is only the hearts and minds of men that are restless.

As though to fortify me she took the letter out and placed it on the table between us. Its pages were folded, yellowed like old skin, the faint tattoo of aged ink that had seeped onto the blank side visible to me. Just like me, I thought, looking at the letter. The life I had lived was folded, only a blank page exposed to the world, emptiness wrapped round the days of my life; faint traces of it could be discerned, but only if you looked closely, very closely.

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