Epigram Books Quotes

“Look, Cha Cha!” says Bo Bo.

“We’re here at our new home!”

Cha Cha shrugs her shoulders as she takes her first look at the Mandai Zoo.”
― Jason Erik Lundberg, A New Home for Bo Bo and Cha Cha

“One day, I decided to be an island. I took off my clothes and walked into the sea, then floated there, bobbing along with the tide, suspended by my inflatable tube and water wings.”
― Ng Yi-Sheng, LONTAR #5

“I remember clearly the afternoon that she stood at the corner beside the door of the tourist centre in Gdansk.”
― You Jin, In Time, Out of Place

“She remembered the way the damp, coarse sand had clumped to her legs and hands, and burrowed beneath her nails and into the folds of her clothes, and she had wondered why the British children in her storybooks were always excited about going to the beach—just as now she wondered why the light from the lighthouse seemed to be coming from the landward side of the expressway. “I thought a lighthouse is out at sea.”
― Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume One

“Any moment now, I thought, he was going to wake up. Any moment.”
― O Thiam Chin, Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Two

“As the wind continued to howl and groan through her decaying body, she began to sing her story.”
― Ken Liu, LONTAR #6

“They will try to ascribe a purpose to my death, as though it were a punishment, but don’t you do so, in order that I continue to live in all the shadows of your longing. I will always be in your sleep and your wakefulness. I will be with you praying, propitiating and yearning for you, in sadness, in sorrow, in dismay and in the most profound happiness.”
― Mohamed Latiff Mohamed, The Widower

“The four of us got back into the car. In an instant, I distinctly heard a “soundless music”. It was the melody of friendship, the sound of a perfectly tuned quartet who got together by chance, four hearts playing in harmony.”
― You Jin, In Time, Out of Place

“In a few years, it is very likely that this series will be considered a milestone in the history of Singapore photography.”
― Raphael Millet

“Where have all the flowers of old Singapore gone? Gone, one would imagine, with the old folks and homes”
― Thien, A Gardener's Log

“So Artichoke was a restaurant borne out of impulse and recklessness. Four years on, it’s also a testament to how an enterprise started on such a fucked up approach can actually succeed.”
― Bjorn Shen, Artichoke: Recipes & Stories from Singapore's Most Rebellious Kitchen

“But what little we did know, we brandished wildly like cavemen’s clubs, slinging out stuff we felt tasted good. That was as intricate as our
game plan ever was—to make food that tasted good.”
― Bjorn Shen, Artichoke: Recipes & Stories from Singapore's Most Rebellious Kitchen

“I was in this on my own—it was make it or break it.”
― Bjorn Shen

“Turn off the light!

Who?

Not me,

but you!”
― Kim Da-Jeong, Blanket Travel

“There were three things Gimme Lao did not know about himself.”
― Sebastian Sim, Let's Give It Up for Gimme Lao!

“Among the wartime survivors was a four-year-old Makassan girl with a large mole dangling like a pigeon egg under her left eye, who was looking for her lost parents. She was picked up by a brothel woman, but later ran away to live among street boys left homeless by the war.

They gave her the nickname Big Mole.”
― Ming Cher, Big Mole

“Former spider boys came from all walks of life—they ranged from homeless street kids and school dropouts to decent kids, but the best ones were those who had gone anywhere and everywhere to search out and capture their fighting spiders; they even ventured into dangerous bushes infested with black mambas. These boys were risk-takers and crowd-pullers, always on the move, always looking for worthy opponents with which to fight their spiders.”
― Ming Cher, Big Mole

“Many years later, Sophia will think of this night, and how close she was to tears. She will wonder how she could have allowed herself to arrive there, but also feel a twinge of loss for the girl still capable of losing control.”
― Jeremy Tiang, It Never Rains on National Day

“She looked at me like I was stupid, the same look the girls in JC used to give me when I hadn’t heard of the latest boy band, or turned up at Zouk wearing unfashionable clothes.”
― Jeremy Tiang, It Never Rains on National Day

“Lim Oh Kee kills himself in the early hours on the 12th day of December, 1921. His last meal is rice and nothing.”
― Evan Adam Ang, Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Two

“But we will not bury our mother. We have no interest in putting her bones in soft ground, no desire for memorials and platitudes, no feelings attached to the organic detritus of her terminated existence.”
― J.Y. Yang, Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Two

“Rebecca woke up with her knees hurting and her fingers ice-cold, and the specifics of her life returned to her as the dream disappeared: weekend, hotel room, Baguio, memory, memory, memory.”
― Eliza Victoria, LONTAR #4

“I think, therefore I am. My fingers that caress these rose and frangipani petals are a result of my thoughts. I feel content, tender. I feel entranced, ecstatic and besotted by the fragrance of the flowers and this is because of my thoughts.”
― Mohamed Latiff Mohamed, The Widower

“Pak Karman hugged his wife’s gravestone tightly. “You left without saying farewell!” The whole of the graveyard was ablaze with light.”
― Mohamed Latiff Mohamed, The Widower

“I’d thought there’d be no winter in the desert, but winter arrived anyway—silently, suddenly.”
― You Jin, Death by Perfume

“Mongkol, poor Mongkol, shedding tears.

Thinking of his smiling, comical face, and his dreams of sending his son to university, I could only lower my head in silence.

And the night continued, cold and dark, the wind frozen beyond the mountains.”
― You Jin, Death by Perfume