Tan Twan Eng > Quotes

“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, The Garden of Evening Mists

“For what is a person without memories? A ghost, trapped between worlds, without an identity, with no future, no past.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

“The palest ink will endure beyond the memories of man”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

“To have memories, happy or sorrowful, is a blessing, for it shows we have lived our lives without reservation.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Gift of Rain

“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?”
― Twan Eng Tan, The Garden of Evening Mists

“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, The Gift of Rain

“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, The Garden of Evening Mists

“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.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

“The mind forgets, but the heart will always remember. And what is the heart's memory but love itself?”
― Twan Eng Tan, The Gift of Rain

“Anything beautiful should be given a name, do you not agree?”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

“Die while I can still remember who I am, who I used to be.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

“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, The Garden of Evening Mists

“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.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

“Before me lies a voyage of a million miles, and my memory is the moonlight I will borrow to illuminate my way.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

“Moments in time when the world is changing bring out the best and the worst in people.”
― Tan Twan Eng

“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.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Gift of Rain

“Feel your body expanding as you breathe: that is where we live, in the moments between each inhalation and exhalation.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

“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, The Garden of Evening Mists

“It begins to rain softly, raising goose-pimples on the pond’s skin.”
― Twan Eng Tan, The Garden of Evening Mists

“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.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Gift of Rain

“I will dance to the music of words, for one more time.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

“The tree of life is already doomed from the moment it is planted.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

“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.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

“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?”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

“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.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Gift of Rain

“Some element in the air between us changed, as though a wind that had been blowing gently had come to an abrupt stillness.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

“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.”
― Twan Eng Tan, The Gift of Rain

“The mind forgets, but the heart will always remember. And what is the heart’s memory but love itself?”
― Twan Eng Tan, The Gift of Rain

“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.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists

“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.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists