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

There's the satisfaction of Eng-Lang-and-Lit; somebody else has said everything for you, and said it better. — Robertson Davies

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

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

We're the only ones left from those withered days. The last two leaves still clinging to the branch waiting to fall. Waiting for the wind to severe us into the sky. — 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

The palest ink will endure beyond the memories of man — Tan Twan Eng

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

Some element in the air between us changed, as though a wind that had been blowing gently had come to an abrupt stillness. — Tan Twan Eng

I hope you make it through law school still feeling like you do.' 'Why wouldn't I?' I asked him. And he answered, 'Sometimes you start off going one way and you eng up going another way and you don't know how it happened. — Francisco X Stork

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 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

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 mountains are as I have always remembered them, the first light of the morning melting down their flanks. — Tan Twan Eng

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

A garden is composed of a variety of clocks, Aritomo had once told me. Some of them run faster than the others, and some of them move slower than wee can ever perceive. I only understood this fully long after I had been his apprentice. — Tan Twan Eng

To have memories, happy or sorrowful, is a blessing, for it shows we have lived our lives without reservation. — Tan Twan Eng

It begins to rain softly, raising goose-pimples on the pond's skin. — Tan Twan Eng

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

Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless in fact may spring conjoined like Chang and Eng in one birth. Is Envy then such a monster? Well, though many an arraigned mortal has in hopes of mitigated penalty pleaded guilty to horrible actions, did anybody ever seriously confess to envy? Something there is in it universally felt to be more shameful than even felonious crime. And not only does everybody disown it, but the better sort are inclined to incredulity when it is in earnest imputed to an intelligent man. But since it's lodgement is in the heart and not the brain, no degree of intellect supplies a guarantee against it. — Herman Melville

She saw the stubborn set of my face. "I've never felt blessed," I said. "There must be free will to choose. Do you know the poem about the two roads, and the one not taken?"
Yes. That has always amused me, because who created the two roads in the first place?"
It was a question I had never considered. — Tan Twan Eng

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. — Tan Twan Eng

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. — Tan Twan Eng

Time seems to overlap, like the shadows of leave pressing down on other leave, layer upon layer. — Tan Twan Eng

Below these words was the garden's name in English: EVENING MISTS. I felt I was about to enter a place that existed only in the overlapping of air and water, light and time. — Tan Twan Eng

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

Time is eating away my memory. Time, and this illness, this trespasser in my brain. — Tan Twan Eng

Enlightenment, it is a moment of complete clarity, of pure bliss. At that instant everything will be revealed to you. — Tan Twan Eng

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is beginning."
Pak Eng and Laughing Chan and Peter all look at Hock Seng with respect. "You were right."
Hock Seng nods impatiently. "I learn."
The storm is gathering. The megodonts must do battle. It is their fate. The power sharing of the last coup could never last. The beasts must clash and one will establish final dominance. Hock Seng murmurs a prayer to his ancestors that he will come out of this maelstrom alive. — Paolo Bacigalupi

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

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

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

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

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

You ever wonder why an East Eng girl like me hasn't got much in the way of family? Well here's the reasons Petra. World War 1. World War 2. Falklands War. Gulf War 1. Gulf War 2 and the War on Drugs. You can take your pick because I've lost whole bloody chunks of my family in all of them. — Chris Cleave

A raintree bent towards a window in one side of the bungalow, eavesdropping on the conversations that had taken place inside over years. — Tan Twan Eng

The mind forgets, but the heart will always remember. And what is the heart's memory but love itself? — Tan Twan Eng

Teacher, as he was called, looked tiny, childlike, and deceptively vulnerable. — Tan Twan Eng