Hwee Hwee Tan

“All the problems that came up... they all arose because of the foreign bodies within us ― things that happened in our childhood, some big, some small, but all significant; things that happened ten years ago, but still control our lives today; things from our yesterdays that will decide what we drink, dream, and doubt, till the day we die. But you can't see those things, because they're not on the outside.”
― Hwee Hwee Tan

“On the few occasions when we did visit my grandfather at the Evergreen Moral Home for the Aged Sick and Handicapped, I never wanted to go back. It's the smells that hit you first, the nauseatingly sweet smell of open sores and wet bandages, reeking of urine, saliva, sweat, pus -— the stench of incurable sickness blanketed by the pungent odour of strong medicine. I stood at the doorway, gagging, my lungs fighting to adapt to the atmosphere. This wasn't the smell of death — that is bearable — no, this was the noxious smell of decomposition, when flesh and soul and heart and bone separate, then rot, deteriorate until all is reduced to a putrid pile of rubbish ready to be wheeled out. The syrupy smell of decay.”
― Hwee Hwee Tan, Foreign Bodies