Top 11 Quotes by Tan Twan Eng

For what is a person without memories? A ghost, trapped between worlds, without an identity, with no future, no past.

For what is a person without memories? A ghost, trapped between worlds, without an identity, with no future, no past.

Memories, Past, Identity

Tan Twan Eng (2013). “The Garden of Evening Mists”, p.26, Canongate Books

Accept that there are things in this world we can never explain and life will be understandable. That is the irony of life. It is also the beauty of it.

Tan Twan Eng

World, Irony, Accepting

To have memories, happy or sorrowful, is a blessing, for it shows we have lived our lives without reservation.

Tan Twan Eng

Memories, Blessing, Reservations

Tan Twan Eng (2009). “The Gift of Rain”, p.69, Weinstein Books

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

Memories, Fall, Clouds

I have become a collapsing star, pulling everything around it, even the light, into an ever-expanding void. Once I lose all ability to communicate with the world outside myself, nothing will be left but what I remember. My memories will be like a sandbar, cut off from the shore by the incoming tide. In time they will become submerged, inaccessible to me. The prospect terrified me. For what is a person without memories? A ghost, trapped between worlds, without an identity, with no future, no past.

Tan Twan Eng

Stars, Memories, Cutting

Tan Twan Eng (2013). “The Garden of Evening Mists”, p.26, Canongate Books

Moments in time when the world is changing bring out the best and the worst in people.

Tan Twan Eng

People, World, Moments

Memories I had locked away have begun to break free, like shards of ice fracturing off an arctic shelf. In sleep, these broken floes drift toward the morning light of remembrance.

Tan Twan Eng

Morning, Memories, Sleep

Tan Twan Eng (2013). “The Garden of Evening Mists”, p.8, Canongate Books