Cyril Wong > Quotes

“Soon we were downloading ourselves
into laptops, phones or pads, freer
than we had hoped,

floating centrifugally across the Internet
to swim alongside forgotten
selfies, spam emails and porn”
― Cyril Wong, LONTAR #3

“If this turns to friendship, it only means
That one of us will suffer.

That when we meet after the worst of endings,
There will only be this skein of words between us—

Most of them for boredom, fewer for loneliness—
Rising out of our mutual space of breath, leaving

Behind a bluer sky each moment of departure.
And one of us will cling on to its blue,

Hung on partings like a muted cloud, while
The other rides on a wing of word away from here.”
― Cyril Wong, Below: Absence: Poems

“I mostly believe, deep in my bones, that life is very simply beyond description; regardless of what one makes of it, life always spills over the parameters of how anyone has chosen to define it.”
― Cyril Wong, The Last Lesson of Mrs de Souza

“We are nothing like the gods. We will never be
remembered for the time we attempted
the waltz on our balcony, as the stars
blinked drowsily, the moon like a frozen yawn.

Even with one of us gone, would not the mind
of the other reveal its universe, its constellation
of memories like a field of flickering candles,
the same face at the center of every flame?”
― Cyril Wong

“Names are what you can hear or see, but cannot smell or touch. I don't need a name, as name stand for things they are not, and I am what all names stand for. If you gave me a name, it would mean that we are separate, you and I, when we are not.

- The Blind Girl and the Talking Moon”
― Cyril Wong

“Soon I find myself squatting on the floor. I am still striking my face; not with my fists this time, but with wide-open hands. I am slapping myself. The sounds I make when my palms meet my cheeks are like an unrelenting round of applause. I am clapping myself. Or clapping for myself. I start to giggle.

All the voices are receding now. I am no longer filled with rage or disappointment. I clap and clap and simply cannot stop.”
― Cyril Wong, Ten Things My Father Never Taught Me and Other Stories

“It is the teacher's and the lawmaker's responsibility to allow the child to express his feelings about growing up. What happens to a child at that particular age? It is a terribly vulnerable time, and if we provide youths with an environment to
be free, to be expressive, without embarrassing them, without shaming them, they would grow up to be healthy, compassionate adults. Instead, if we force them to “belong, belong, belong,” they all become repressed. There is a complete absence of options.”
― Cyril Wong

“What does it mean to write a story of your own life in your head? We all do that whether we are writers or not. We all have a story about who we are: what gender we are, what experiences we have . . . all sorts of stories and narratives we allow ourselves to believe in and create as we go along.”
― Cyril Wong

“I dig in; but not before catching my squatting figure in the mirror, that gleaming mirage; so like my father from this distance I stop chewing, analysing hardened cheekbones and vacant eyes; a son long abandoned by his father (forced to move out, as a young adult, on account of his sexuality) now his father's diminutive likeness; an ironic narrative about genetics and its unfunny punch line, since I offer no spring of my own to further the tale; no passing on of love's disavowal either; how cool the noodles taste in my mouth, unmemorable yet oddly reassuring...”
― Cyril Wong, Ten Things My Father Never Taught Me and Other Stories

“...I dig in; but not before catching my squatting figure in the mirror, that gleaming mirage; so like my father from this distance I stop chewing, analysing hardened cheekbones and vacant eyes; a son long abandoned by his father (forced to move out, as a young adult, on account of his sexuality) now his father's diminutive likeness; an ironic narrative about genetics and its unfunny punch line, since I offer no offspring of my own to further the tale; no passing on of love's disavowal either; how cool the noodles taste in my mouth, unmemorable yet oddly reassuring...”
― Cyril Wong, Ten Things My Father Never Taught Me and Other Stories

“There was no love that I could see or feel between the men and the women; only boredom. Yet, paradoxically, I could also tell that this was what everyone wanted: a family structure they could be unhappy in; at least it formed the basis of a stable home, a baseline to a life that would otherwise not be tethered to anything.”
― Cyril Wong, Ten Things My Father Never Taught Me and Other Stories