Felisa Tan > Quotes

“Despite their illusive nature, twilight never fails to provide a magical quality to the day—a transitional space between day and night, light and dark, head and heart...”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“We do not need more things to be happy—
just some gratitude would do.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“Sometimes we reach a dead end.
In that case, start again.”
― Felisa Tan

“Sunshine and rain make a rainbow. The coming together of pleasure and pain is what gives life its colour, texture, and flavour.

Each experience accumulates to compose a grand work of art, of which we ourselves are the artists.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“Wherever I go, I search for meaning.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“Graffiti is the art of the people. It is a language without clear official status, but whose instinctive quality testifies to the honesty of human experience and the true nobility of art.

Often marked with a sense of eroticism and violence, the wall conserves something pure and sacred about the human story.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“What miraculous organs our eyes are!

They allow us to see colours, feel textures, look into the eyes of a loved one, take pleasure in the sense of sight, and perceive things from the heart.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“Humankind, with all its symbolic capability, seems to always have associated light and height with a higher power—something numinous and holy.

Could it be that deep down inside, we all know that we are part of something far greater than ourselves?”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“It is amazing how the world changes as we do.

I have felt it myself,
and I hope someday you can feel it too.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“The most inspiring works of art are not those that put forward the sense of identity of the artist, but those that open the door to self-awareness, which is the foundation of spiritual consciousness.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“Change, impermanence, and evolution are the mechanism through which the process of existence perpetuates. It is an essential part of Life and all its beauty.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“The scene was dreamy, surreal, and picturesquely still, exhibiting the kind of beauty that is subtle and not calling for attention, but nonetheless there for anyone who is present enough to see it.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“It is in my instinctive impulse to seek for answers, but as I grew older (and hopefully,
a little wiser), I learned that language is a limited human construct.

Just because we are unable to word things out, it does not mean they are meaningless. If anything, most of the essential things in life are inexpressible.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“Nature always has its way of showing its power and might. Majestic, full of life, and passionate; yet graceful, calm, and not forceful.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“Beauty is everywhere, if we only know where to look.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“There was something sacred about the light that flooded inside this abandoned edifice, as if washing away all the collective pain, misery, and bad history that ever happened in this place, giving it a chance to be something new.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“I have learned to accept and appreciate beauty as it is, without always having to reason why.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson eloquently conveyed in his poem ‘The Rhodora’ (1834), ‘If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty has its own excuse for being.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“The phenomenon of light is such an amazing thing to experience.

Oftentimes, we forget to appreciate how the laws of nature—including those manifested in our bodily existence—work so wonderfully.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“The way upstream may not be easy,
for we have strayed far.

But one is never too lost
to rediscover the Path.

Like pigeons, we can always find
our way back home.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“Our thoughts and emotions are like a train—
we have a choice whether or not to jump on it.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“We are larger than the sum of our parts, and we possess the potential for greatness of a magnitude inconceivable to our conventional ways of thinking.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“Ernest Hemingway was right—there is a crack in everything, and that is how the light gets in.

Let warmth touch your wound; let your pain cleanse you in all its entirety.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“Sometimes my pictures do not describe grand places or things, and sometimes they are not grand pictures; but they mean something to me —like this abandoned corner at the back of a church.

She called to me that she was dying, crumbling down, and only some appreciation could save her.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“The world is composed of seemingly random events that constitute a harmonious whole.

Hans Christian Andersen said it best: ‘Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“After a long wandering of existence,
with all its joys and pains,
perhaps one decides to go home.

And it is in that moment that one
finally asks the right question:
What is the Way home?”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“The night wakes up the senses;
it wakes up the Soul.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“If this book ends up in your hands, it means all the forces of the Universe have conspired for the crossing of our paths—the meeting of our consciousness.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“In every language, there is a word for love. Love is undeniably a universal language and experience.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“A large part of photography is about being in tune with our deeper selves and the world around us.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning

“The primal need for self-expression and documentation has appeared in human beings since the dawn of humankind. Our ancestors began carving shapes on rocks more than 40,000 years ago, and now graffiti has become a popular urban medium for self-proclamation an evidence of one’s egoic identity reinforcement, an innate desire to pronounce oneself and leave a mark in the world.

The wall is a sacred place. Containing layers and layers of joy and pain, it is a collective scream on the voice of humanity; it is raw, vulnerable, and real.”
― Felisa Tan, In Search for Meaning