Aran Chandran

“Yet these memories are impossible to forget, regardless of whether we actually lived through them. I believe they stay in our bodies. As sickness, as addiction, as poor posture or a tendency toward apology, as a deepened capacity for sadness or anger. As determination to survive, a relentless tempered optimism. I believe they are inherited, passed on to us like brown eyes or the shape of a nose.”
― Elizabeth Miki Brina, Speak, Okinawa: A Memoir

“Life isn’t fair, and the minute we get that through our heads and stop trying to control things we can’t, we can shed the fear and guilt that kills our motivation.”
― Sean Tucker, The Meaning in the Making: The Why and How Behind Our Human Need to Create

“Someday I'll be a weather-beaten skull resting on a grass pillow,
Serenaded by a stray bird or two.
Kings and commoners end up the same,
No more enduring than last night's dream.”
― Ryokan

“Large-scale coffee planting in Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Perak and Johor in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was entirely a European effort, with a number of former planters from Ceylon participating. As the first commercial crop that could be successfully grown in much of British Malaya, coffee brought in capital and management personnel, and led to the importation of Tamil and Javanese labour.”
― Barbara Watson Andaya, A History of Malaysia