Best Eng Quotes & Sayings

On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the emperor of Japan. — Tan Twan Eng

It was odd how Aritomo's life seemed to glance off mine; we were like two leaves falling from a tree, touching each other now and again as they spiraled to the forest floor. — Tan Twan Eng

Why has pachinko swept Japan? It can hardly be the excitement of gambling, since the risks and rewards are so small. During the hours spent in front of a pachinko machine, there is an almost total lack of stimulation other than the occasional rush of ball bearings. There is no thought, no movement; you have no control over the flow of balls, apart from holding a little lever which shoots them up to the top of the machine; you sit there enveloped in a cloud of heavy cigarette smoke, semi-dazed by the racket of millions of ball bearings falling through machines around you. Pachinko verges on sensory deprivation. It is the ultimate mental numbing, the final victory of the educational system. - Lost Japan, Eng. vers., 1996 — Alex Kerr

I have become a collapsing star, pulling everything around it, even the light, into an ever-expanding void. — Tan Twan Eng

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. — Tan Twan Eng

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 — Tan Twan Eng

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. — Tan Twan Eng

entire cottage industry centered just on Aritomo-sensei, — Tan Twan Eng

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

Die while I can still remember who I am, who I used to be. — Tan Twan Eng

Are all of us the same, I wonder, navigating our lives by interpreting the silences between words spoken, analysing the returning echoes of our memory in order to chart the terrain, in order to make sense of the world around us? — Tan Twan Eng

I have lived, I have traveled the world, and now, like a worn-out clock, my life is winding down, the hands slowing, stepping out of the flow of time. If one steps out of time what does one have? Why, the past of course, gradually being worn away by the years as a pebble halted on a riverbed is eroded by the passage of water. — Tan Twan Eng

Suffering happens when we expect life to be something more and different than what it is in the present moment. When we let go of all expectations, there is peace. — Kim Eng

Anything beautiful should be given a name, do you not agree? — Tan Twan Eng

The tree of life is already doomed from the moment it is planted. — Tan Twan Eng

Time did not exist; I had no idea of how many minutes had passed. And what was time but merely a wind that never stopped? — Tan Twan Eng

My eyes wondered from one end of the mountains to the other. 'Do you think they go on forever?'
'The mountains?' Aritomo said, as though he had been asked that question before. 'They fade away. Like all things. — Tan Twan Eng

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

Feel your body expanding as you breathe: that is where we live, in the moments between each inhalation and exhalation. — Tan Twan Eng

mountaineering offers you a chance to learn about yourself by venturing beyond the confines of the modern world. — Ron Eng

Before me lies a voyage of a million miles, and my memory is the moonlight I will borrow to illuminate my way. — Tan Twan Eng

I spent three and a half years writing the novel 'Chang & Eng,' about the conjoined brothers for whom the term 'Siamese twins' was contrived, and when I think of these afflicted people, my only emotion is one of profound sympathy. — Darin Strauss

70,000 to 100,000 births; twins joined at the head occur only once in 2 to 2.5 million births. Siamese twins received their name because of the birthplace (Siam) of Chang and Eng (1811 - 1874) whom P.T. Barnum exhibited across America and Europe. Most cranio pagus Siamese twins die at birth or shortly afterward. So far as we know, not more than 50 attempts had previously been made to separate such twins. Of those, less than ten operations have resulted in two fully normal children. Aside from the skill of the operating surgeons, the success depends largely on how much and what kind of tissue the babies share. Occipital cranio pugus twins (such as the Binders) had never before been separated with both surviving. — Ben Carson

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

In return for surrendering to the throw, you are given the gift of flight,' he said. — Tan Twan Eng

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

In the way such things happen in real life, I suspect I'll never see him again. We talked about that once. There was a term in Japanese, he said. Eng. It was both a concept and a word of advice. It meant that anyone you meet may be the most important person in your life. Therefore, that every stranger should be treated as a friend. Loved before it is too late. You never know (he said) in which night your ship is passing. — Tobias Hill

Love and trust are Siamese twins, as conjoined as Chang and Eng. — David Ebershoff

For what is a person without memories? A ghost, trapped between worlds, without an identity, with no future, no past. — Tan Twan Eng

There are some people...who might feel that such practices are misguided, like trying to wield heaven's powers on earth. And yet it was only in the carefully planned and created garden of Yugiri that I had found a sense of order and calm and even, for a brief moment of time, forgetfulness. — Tan Twan Eng