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The Garden of Evening Mists

Tan Twan Eng

Top 10 Best Quotes

“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.”

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

“The palest ink will endure beyond the memories of man”

“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.”

“That point in time just as the last leaf is about to drop, as the remaining petal is about to fall; that moment captures everything beautiful and sorrowful about life. Mono no aware, the Japanese call it.”

“Anything beautiful should be given a name, do you not agree?”

“Die while I can still remember who I am, who I used to be.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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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Book Keywords:

perception, memories, pg-186, time, death, description, memory-loss, loneliness, life, perspective, writing, ch-11, pg-1, pg-25, memory

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