Tan Twan Eng quotes:
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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.
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Moments in time when the world is changing bring out the best and the worst in people.
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The mind forgets, but the heart will always remember. And what is the heart's memory but love itself?
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A raintree bent towards a window in one side of the bungalow, eavesdropping on the conversations that had taken place inside over years.
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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.
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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.
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Die while I can still remember who I am, who I used to be.
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We were like two moths around a candle, I thought, circling closer and closer to the flame, waiting to see whose wings would catch fire first."
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For what is a person without memories? A ghost, trapped between worlds, without an identity, with no future, no past.
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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.
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The palest ink will endure beyond the memories of man
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Time is eating away my memory. Time, and this illness, this trespasser in my brain.
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To have memories, happy or sorrowful, is a blessing, for it shows we have lived our lives without reservation.