Tan Twan Eng Quotes

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

  Tan Twan Eng

  Memories, Past, Identity

  Tan Twan Eng (2013). “The Garden of Evening Mists”, p.26, Canongate Books

  48 Copy quote

• 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.

  Tan Twan Eng

  World, Irony, Accepting

  25 Copy quote

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

  Tan Twan Eng

  Memories, Blessing, Reservations

  Tan Twan Eng (2009). “The Gift of Rain”, p.69, Weinstein Books

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Tan Twan Eng

  Memories, Fall, Clouds

  21 Copy quote

• 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.

  Tan Twan Eng

  Stars, Memories, Cutting

  Tan Twan Eng (2013). “The Garden of Evening Mists”, p.26, Canongate Books

  8 Copy quote

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

  Tan Twan Eng

  People, World, Moments

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Tan Twan Eng

  Morning, Memories, Sleep

  Tan Twan Eng (2013). “The Garden of Evening Mists”, p.8, Canongate Books

  6 Copy quote

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

  Tan Twan Eng

  Taken, Years, Sides

  Tan Twan Eng (2013). “The Garden of Evening Mists”, p.81, Canongate Books

  6 Copy quote

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

  Tan Twan Eng

  Memories, Brain, Eating

  5 Copy quote

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

  Tan Twan Eng

  Who I Am, Remember, Used

  Tan Twan Eng (2013). “The Garden of Evening Mists”, p.142, Canongate Books

  6 Copy quote

• The palest ink will endure beyond the memories of man

  Tan Twan Eng

  Memories, Men, Ink

  Tan Twan Eng (2013). “The Garden of Evening Mists”, p.122, Canongate Books

  5 Copy quote

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