Singapore Literature Quotes

“Manglish is the Malaysian form of English. It’s superior to Singlish when you’re in Malaysia and inferior when you’re in Singapore. It’s known for its love for Malay, Cantonese, Tamil, Mandarin, and Hokkien. Occasionally, there are English terms, too. It’s different from Indian English, which is spoken with a punchy tone, or British English, which is an endangered language in London. A key distinction between Manglish and Singlish is Manglish’s recognition of Tamil words. Singlish denies the existence of inferior Tamil words.”
― Merlin Franco, Saint Richard Parker

“You yearn to stay in this in-between place, where the beauty of the times you have freshly bade farewell to is still alive and vivid in your mind – almost real – and the reality of your new circumstances has yet to fully sink in. You listen to the familiar melodies that had accompanied you on your journey, and allow the music to evoke landscapes and scenes in your mind. The songs caress your sub-consciousness and fill your being with an airy joy. You are both here and elsewhere. Or perhaps you are everywhere and nowhere.”
― Agnes Chew, The Desire for Elsewhere

“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

“She tried to remember all the times she had spoken to him. She replayed every moment she could remember at the beach last week. Not once had she led him to believe that she liked him improperly. And yet, last night, he had appeared as if she had invited him. She had given herself so willingly, so lasciviously, that he must have thought she had desired him all along. Perhaps she had, or perhaps she had not realised how pleasurable intimacy could be.”
― Mahita Vas, Rain Tree

“We were always eating expired things. Milk, bread, biscuits, cake. We forgot about them as they sat around the house and just as they had gone bad, we put them in our mouths. Chocolates I brought back with me from Australia, cheeses in last year's Christmas hamper, juice from the last time someone decided to go grocery shopping. We didn't always realize they tasted funny – not everything curdles and a two-month-old orange can be just as sweet. When we did, it was usually too late. Sometimes it wasn't. We finished what we had started anyway.”
― Cheryl Julia Lee, We Were Always Eating Expired Things

“Never forget,' says Sugar Daddy, 'we are a nation built on sugar. It is our history and it is the source of our prosperity, now and in the future.'

This is true. Our entire nation sits on reclaimed land made from sugar. Ours is an island that rose out of the sea, built on a hard core of toffee.”
― Julie Koh, Capital Misfits

“Moments later, I was climbing nervously into the back of the car. The driver wore the archetypal expression of an antagonist. No words were exchanged beyond the brief lines uttered to this nameless stranger, whose inclinations remained unclear. The car sped along empty roads and traversed dingy alleyways. Music blared from its speakers. I did not remember exhaling throughout the entire journey.”
― Agnes Chew, The Desire for Elsewhere

“The landscape of Singapore is different now. Modern buildings scratch the skyline with a pomp and display that wasn't there in days gone by. Old and new come together to create a modern Singapore that was still in the process of being made as I grew up.”
― Dipa Sanatani, The Merchant of Stories: A Creative Entrepreneur's Journey

“No, I am not imagining a book-burning, warmongering, anti-intellectual fascist regime – in my plan, there is no place for re ghters who light up the Homers and Lady Murasakis and Cao Xueqins stashed under your bed – because, for starters, I’m not banning literature per se. I’m banning the reading of literature. Purchasing and collecting books and other forms of literature remains perfectly legitimate as long as you don’t peruse the literature at hand.”
― Kyoko Yoshida

“We do not know if she collapsed because of overwhelming joy, extreme surprise, grave disappointment, or heavy anxiety that for the next months and years she would live with a human male, because in fact she had been honest when she told her girlfriends that she had given up on men, OR NONE OF THE ABOVE.”
― Kyoko Yoshida

“If rewriting equals rereading, we must logically conclude that writing is reading. If this is indeed the case, how could we possibly write under a ban on reading? The only way left is mouth-to-mouth – poets and storytellers recite their pieces and before we can commit them to memory, everything vanishes into thin air.”
― Kyoko Yoshida

“She pulls me further down. More trapped souls reach out to us, dressed in clothes from decades past. The girl ignores them as we descend along the timeline – decade by decade – towards the birth of the island.”
― Julie Koh, Capital Misfits

“Later, you told me what your mother had said. How your father, the farmer, rose up slowly. You told me how your mother wailed on the other end of the phone, grieving her loss and complaining about the basketball of a goitre perched on her shoulder. She told you, your father walked onto the veranda and saw a chook floating ten feet above the ground. The chook didn’t flap a feather and just sat there brooding, swaying in the breeze.”
― Jon Gresham, We Rose Up Slowly

“do u remember u whispered to me "bitch" that's why i kicked your face with my heels and then you landed punches on my eye which resulted in the picture i have which i refused to post but you're a liar and hypocrite so im thinking twice.”
― Nicole Choo

“didnt i just say we were both violent to each other???? i didnt post the pictures of the bruises because i know i gae you some too.... now you're hating on me entirely while i was neutral pretty much the whole time bro. Plus, you tell me i block u off? HELLO, YOU DO IT TOO AND ACTUALLY MORE THAN ME. BRUH YOURE A HYPOCRITE WHILE I WAS TRYING TO MAKE THE POST SOUND LIKE I WASNT BLAMING YOU BECAUSE I DONT WANT TO. You focused on work? you told me i changed so much and you're so proud of me the last time we had a shoot. Plus, i share all my money with you because i know you dont come from a wealty family and my parents were not happy about that but i empathised with you and i know you built me up to this day thats why taking care of you was part of my duty as well.”
― Nicole Choo