10 Quotes & Sayings By Tan Twan Eng

Tan Twan Eng is an award-winning author of fourteen books, including the international bestseller The Garden of Evening Mists. He has also published more than sixty short stories and four collections of essays in Malaysia and Singapore. Tan was born in Kampar, but he grew up in Kuala Lumpur. He is currently working on his next book, The Prophet, which will be published by Penguin Books.

1
The mind forgets, but the heart will always remember. And what is the heart's memory but love itself? Tan Twan Eng
2
Paraphrasing Yeats: It was as the Irish poet had written, a waste of breath, the years that had gone past, the years to come. There was only the present moment to live and die in. [ref. An Irish Airman Foresees His Death. ..The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death. W.B. Yeats Tan Twan Eng
3
I have lived, I have traveled the world, and now, like a worn-out clock, my life is winding down, the hands slowing, stepping out of the flow of time. If one steps out of time what does one have? Why, the past of course, gradually being worn away by the years as a pebble halted on a riverbed is eroded by the passage of water. Tan Twan Eng
4
Are all of us the same, I wonder, navigating our lives by interpreting the silences between words spoken, analysing the returning echoes of our memory in order to chart the terrain, in order to make sense of the world around us? Tan Twan Eng
5
It is getting dark. In the low mists over the hills, an orange glow broods, as if the trees are on fire. Bats are flooding out from the hundreds of caves that perforate these mountainsides. I watch them plunge into the mists without any hesitation, trusting in the echoes and silences in which they fly. Are all of us the same, I wonder, navigating our lives by interpreting the silences between words spoken, analyzing the returning echoes of our memory in order to chart the terrain, in order to make sense of the world around us? . Tan Twan Eng
6
Memory is like patches of sunlight in an overcast valley, shifting with the movement of the clouds. Now and then the light will fall on a particular point in time, illuminating it for a moment before the wind seals up the gap, and the world is in shadows again. Tan Twan Eng
7
To have memories, happy or sorrowful, is a blessing, for it shows we have lived our lives without reservation. Tan Twan Eng
8
The palest ink will endure beyond the memories of man Tan Twan Eng
9
My eyes wondered from one end of the mountains to the other. 'Do you think they go on forever?'' The mountains?' Aritomo said, as though he had been asked that question before. 'They fade away. Like all things. Tan Twan Eng