55 Quotes by Tan Twan Eng

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.

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?

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

The palest ink will endure beyond the memories of man

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.

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.

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

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.

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.