“To have memories, happy or sorrowful, is a blessing, for it shows we have lived our lives without reservation.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“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, quote from The Gift of Rain
“As with all the principles of aikijutsu, you do not meet the force of the strike head-on. You parry, you step to the side to avoid the blow, your redirect the force and unbalance your opponent. It is the same with the ken, the sword. These principles apply to you daily life as well. Never meet a person’s anger directly. Deflect, distract him, even agree with him. Unbalance his mind, and you can lead him anywhere you want.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“The world goes by, the young and the hopeful, all head for their future. Where does that leave us? There is a misconception that we have reached our destinations the moment we grow old, but it is not a well-accepted fact that we are still travelling towards those destinations, still beyond our reach even on the day we close our eyes for the final time.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“I had loaded another weight onto his suffering and it hurt me to understand that while one person can never really share the pain of another, they can so easily and so heedlessly add to it.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“The mind forgets, but the heart will always remember. And what is the heart’s memory but love itself?”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Time seems to overlap, like the shadows of leave pressing down on other leave, layer upon layer.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“The mind forgets, but the heart will always remember. And what is the heart's memory but love itself?”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Duty is a concept created by emperors and generals to deceive us into performing their will. Be wary when duty speaks, for it often masks the voice of others.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Was this part of the process of growing up, that we finally noticed the people closest to us in a different, clearer light?”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“One question remained to me. “If a higher level of bujutsu involves fighting with the mind, what then is the very highest level?” He closed his eyes for a while, seeing things he would never show me. “That,” he said, “would be never to fight at all.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Enlightenment, it is a moment of complete clarity, of pure bliss. At that instant everything will be revealed to you.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Yes, I could say that I had lived my life, if not to the full then at least almost to the brim. What more could one ask? Rare is the person whose life overflows.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“while one person can never really share the pain of another, they can so easily and so heedlessly add to it.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“In return for surrendering to the throw, you are given the gift of flight,’ he said.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Never meet a person’s anger directly. Deflect, distract him, even agree with him. Unbalance his mind, and you can lead him anywhere you want.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“I am certain it has never been easy, growing up as a child of mixed parentage in this place. But that is your strength. Accept the fact that you are different, that you are of two worlds. And I wish you to remember this when you feel you cannot go on: you are used to the duality of life. You have the ability to bring all of life's disparate elements into a cohesive whole. So use it”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“none of my children—not one—ever took the easy road; that they strove to keep sanity, reason, and compassion alive and burning in these tragic times.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“The young have hopes and dreams, while the old hold the remains of them in their hands and wonder what has happened to their lives.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“I can only teach you the way, that is all. What you do with it and what it does to you, those are beyond my influence.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“He stopped, pausing to arrange his words like an ikebana expert with his flowers, shifting, bending, adding, and taking away to achieve the results he desired.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“What made it worse was that we could never truly share such burdens with even those closest to us. In the end, the mistakes were our own, the consequences to be borne by us alone.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Then you understand that certain things cannot be stopped, that they must be allowed to proceed, regardless of the consequences?”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“When you are lost, in this world or on the continent of time itself, remember who you have been and you will know who you are. These people were all you, and you are them. I was you before you were born and you will be me after I am gone. That is the meaning of family.” He”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Teacher, as he was called, looked tiny, childlike, and deceptively vulnerable.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“In an instant I saw that I had unconsciously replicated Musashi’s drawing, the drawing that had been copied by Endo-san and for the briefest moment I saw how everything and everyone and every time was connected in some manner.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“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.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
“Spirit expanded, mind unfurling open, heart in flight.”
― Tan Twan Eng, quote from The Gift of Rain
Tan Twan Eng
Born place: Penang, Malaysia
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“Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I'd look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just feel a prayer.”
― L.M. Montgomery, quote from Anne of Green Gables
“His ear heard more than what was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from Of Mice and Men
“Denn die Todten reiten Schnell. (For the dead travel fast.)”
― Bram Stoker, quote from Dracula
“I am I, and I wish I weren't.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World
“He dug so deeply into her sentiments that in search of interest he found love, because by trying to make her love him he ended up falling in love with her. Petra Cotes, for her part, loved him more and more as she felt his love increasing, and that was how in the ripeness of autumn she began to believe once more in the youthful superstition that poverty was the servitude of love. Both looked back then on the wild revelry, the gaudy wealth, and the unbridled fornication as an annoyance and they lamented that it had cost them so much of their lives to find the paradise of shared solitude. Madly in love after so many years of sterile complicity, they enjoyed the miracle of living each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out people they kept on blooming like little children and playing together like dogs.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from One Hundred Years of Solitude
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