Tash Aw

“Man is a restless creature, nomadic at heart.”

“...my limbs became leaden, my head light as yarn on a weaver's spindle. My vision dazzled with the colours of richly shot silk; above me the sky was a tentative white canopy.”

“Outlines of dead logs I hauled away remained impressed on the damp earth, scarring the ground with their funereal shapes.”

“...he returned to his barricaded silence, locking me out of his world. The unfathomable, inscrutable East, I thought. I was cut adrift from the shores of understanding. The sea spread itself before me, leading to a blank, blank horizon.”

“The gorgeous breathlessness and thrilling pulse -- those are sensations that the years have layered on top of the initial emptiness, like sheet after sheet of silk covering a bare table. More than fifty years later I can only see the cloth; the table has been obscured.”

“Although harmony with nature is of considerable importance in planning a garden, it must never be allowed to obscure what lies at the heart of the design;the salvation of the human spirit. In creating a garden, we acquire, by force, a patch of land from the jungle; we mould it so that it becomes an oasis amid the wilderness. It is an endless struggle. Turn our backs for a moment and the darkness of the forest begins its insidious invasion of our tiny haven. The plants that we insert -- artificially, it must be noted, for no garden is a work of Mother Nature -- must not only provide shelter for the soul, they must be able to absorb and then disperse the creeping darkness of the jungle around us. The decorations do not merely adorn, they protect. They create a place where, at the end of our lives, we may find peace.”

“...my mother took a younger man as a lover. They spent all day in her boudoir, festering in each other's company.”

“...a small piece of silk. It was at once iridescent and delicate, and shone with a colour no Occidental could ever have conceived....I held it in my hands, allowing it to cascade from my fingers. It was shot through with so many strands of colour that every time it moved its appearance changed: moonlight, emeralds and pearls all passed through my hands. This cold chameleon so transformed itself that I could scarcely believe it was the same piece of cloth.”

“It's impossible to find happiness if you're an orphan.""That's not true. Orphans are the only ones who are free to find their own happiness; they don't have their own history so they create it for themselves.""But, Z, that's just an illusion. Their lives are determined for them by people who have no relation to them whatsoever -- total strangers dictate their future. They have no attachment to anything, they stumble around in the dark until one day something happens to set them on a different, random path. I don't call that freedom.""But that's just what it's like for all of us!”