“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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“Some people have a gift for making you feel okay, just by the fact of their presence.”
― Michelle Richmond, quote from The Year of Fog
“It's like a cat bell, so pretty yet alarming, because i know I'm letting myself fall when maybe I should fly away. But the loneliness inside, it's so fucking painful. It's that longing feeling that scratches to escape and makes you want to blurt out all kinds of gushy crap just to get the girl to look at you...I hate it. Love its melty-ness and hate its leash around my neck.”
― Lisa McMann, quote from Dead to You
“To free a man from error is not to deprive him of anything but to give him something: for the knowledge that a thing is false is a piece of truth. No error is harmless: sooner or later it will bring misfortune to him who harbours it. Therefore deceive no one, but rather confess ignorance of what you do not know, and leave each man to devise his own articles of faith for himself.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, quote from The Wisdom of Life
“Seeking happiness outside ourselves is like waiting for sunlight in a cave facing north. —Tibetan saying”
― Timber Hawkeye, quote from Buddhist Boot Camp Manuscript
“Lena is sure that other people don't have many selves. She is terrified that she doesn't have a core self, an essential Lena. She feels that she used to but that she lost it along the way, that at some point it became buried, suffocated, and died, because when she looks beneath the chattering of the selves, nothing is there. Maybe the fractured feeling is taking hold because something is dead inside her, or missing.”
― Haley Tanner, quote from Vaclav and Lena
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