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Tan Twan Eng

Tan Twan Eng Books

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“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?”

MemoryForgettingSilence Speaks
Author:Tan Twan Eng
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“I felt old, and it was not a very pleasant feeling. The world goes by, the young and the hopeful, all head for their future. Where does that leave us? There is the misconception that we have reached our destinations the moment we grow old, but it is not a well-accepted fact that we are still traveling toward those destinations, still beyond our reach even on the day we close our eyes for the final time.”

DestinyAgingDestination In Life
Book:The Gift of Rain
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“A tea master horrified his pupils by planting a hedge in his garden, blocking the view of the Inland Sea for which his school was famous,' I said, half to myself. 'He left only a gap in the hedge and set a basin before it. Anyone drinking from it would have to bend down and look at the sea through the hole.' 'Why do you think he planted the hedge to block out the famous view?' 'Tominaga explained it to me but I've only just really understood it now - the effect of seeing the view is much more powerful than if the sea has not been obstructed.”

SpiritualityPsychology
Book:The Garden of Evening Mists
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“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.”

WorldPersonsLightPastRememberLeftStarsLosesMemoriesAbilityCuttingIdentityCommunicateGhostShoreVoidTidesTrappedPullingTerrifiedExpandingInaccessibleSubmergedAbility To Communicate
Book:The Garden of Evening Mists
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