Quotes by Singaporean Authors - Page 2

The whole thing becomes like this evil enchantment from a fairy tale, but you're made to believe the spell can never be broken.
Jess C. Scott
She was my black rose, a broken angel I could hug and drift away with into peaceful oblivion.
Jess C. Scott
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.
Adrian Tan
Be hated. One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself.
Adrian Tan
But the insane need to do it was stronger than the sense of whether it was a wrong or right thing to do.
Jess C. Scott
A worthy failure is more valuable than a mediocre success.
Kuo Pao Kun
You remember the dialogue you had with yourself, you can quote the emotion word for word, as if you’re still there, as if it matters that you can map in detail the geographies of regret.It starts with a hope and ends with a turn of the stomach: a cringe at the excuses you make for your heart, a momentary forever you remember on alternate days over coffee and novels that hit too close to home.You cry because you know the point at which you could have turned back but didn’t, could have taken time by the throat and resisted, could have ignored the phone, answered that message, said no, said yes, said nothing, smiled - whatever it is that you didn’t do. But by the time that moment ends, it is over and you are in too deep, wondering why there exists no rewind button for the soul, no second chance for the petty player, no backup plan for those who risk everything on nothing, all at once.
Tania De Rozario
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 o make sense of the world around us?
Twang Eng Tan
You scour these Chinatowns of the mind, translating themlike sutras Xuan Zhang fetched from India, testing waysreturn might be possible against these homesick inventions, trace the traveller's alien steps across borders, and in between discover how transit has a way of lasting, the way these Chinatowns grew out of not knowing whether to return or to stay, and then became home.
Boey Kim Cheng
Writing is the light of imagination playing over shadow of thoughts.
Khaled Talib
i smile. things taken for granted have a way of catching you offguard when you least expect it, and then you're taken by what the portuguese calls saudade, a sense of longing for something, someone not there anymore.
Yeow Kai Chai
Pages burnt, memories buried, I wakeor think I'm awake. Or dreaming still?
Yong Shu Hoong
I'm not telling you to be quiet. I'm just saying that if you speak a little softer, we both might just hear what peace sounds like.
Noor Iskandar
If all else fails, we then factor (fall) into our equation. And pray hard, someone factors (catching us) into theirs.
Noor Iskandar
Better to forget, better to let go of the bitterness. I say bitterness is only good in medicine, or if you fry bitter gourd with egg, then it's dlicious. I told Lan-Lan many times, we have only one life, it's important to kua kwee, to look spaciously. Not keep the eyes so narrowed down to the small dispairs.Those people who say forgive and forget, I say they not right. Not so simple. I say, find right medicine. Bitterness must be just right for problem. Then swallow it, think of good things can do when no longer sick.
Lydia Kwa
writing home"here in the wilderness of australiawriting home becomes easyin spite of the spreading wild firesthere is less heat, more certainty.writing home, writing thisi think of those without real homes–our city, people say, provides houseswhich do not, often, bring one home.
Kirpal Singh
It seemed as if the mountains, wave after wave of them, were like the sea, going outward forever into distance, till, far away, they became engulfed in clouds, and joined—mountain and sky in one. Standing there on top, facing the enormity of the world, I thought of myself as a man. How boundlessly small we are…
Tan Kok Seng
Mother made sure her little kids were subjected to a strict routine. We were given a timetable which covered our every waking moment, copies of which were posted by our bedside, in the sitting room and in the kitchen. Story hour meant that mother would read us novels and short stories by Guy de Maupassant, Oscar Wilde and Edmondo de Amicis. Soon we graduated to Tolstoy, Gogol and Turgenev. She read them to us in Chinese and I never realised until much later that the writers wrote them in different European languages. Comics were absolutely forbidden and so were Enid Blyton adventures and pop music. . .Lee Cyn and I soon went to a primary school nearby. . .After mother’s rigorous timetable, school became fun and easy-going.
Ang Swee Chai
with you, the sense i have lost my place in a bookor simply lost — misplaced the memorywhich isn't in the last place where I looked.a thought that the clouds don't move — that it is wewho thunder past — there it is! an old vacation,a train ride — sense of immobility.as sky and forest scroll past in relation,we are not moved, pretend to love the view,resort at length to scripted conversationby a poet-turned-screenwriter who didn't want this job, career gone grossly wrongand now drafts action film scripts wholly two-dimensional unless you choose to don the 3d glasses that do not stay on —
Joshua Ip
Carve your own adventure, bloom your own romance, thread your own signs
Noor Iskandar
Time will solve all the problems Chinese school graduates face. In our bilingual society, there are no more Chinese school graduates, only English school graduates who can speak Mandarin. These English school graduates probably can also read and write Chinese, but they did not go to a Chinese school, and they act and think differently from us. Drawing a line between us, they would never say they graduated from a Chinese school, because former Chinese school graduates, that is, the vanishing group of people that includes us, are second-class citizens. They, on the other hand, belong to the first class, the Chinese elite, English school graduates who are fluent in Chinese.
Yeng Pway Ngon
Coincidence sometimes happens as in a fairy tale. Wong was in an emotional state of mind. Still smoking opium, he thought about Kwang’s long-dead father, who had arrived in Singapore from Amoy on the junk Nam Hong. The opium den now felt bare and lonely without all the old vibrations. It was also dark and damp and the small kerosene lamp was running low on fuel. Wong added more kerosene and mumbled to himself, “Tonight I am going to smoke my way to heaven!
Ming Cher
During the Japanese invasion, bombs had fallen from the sky and people could run for cover. Now, they exploded in the middle of the road, or in the fields while people were playing soccer.
Mohamed Latiff Mohamed
His wife had also studied art in her hometown, and she could paint, but depending on such work for her livelihood was just not possible. As far as appearances went, she was definitely a real beauty. When she was young, she looked a little like Gong Li, but now that she was middle-aged, she had put on weight and gradually taken on more of a bell-shaped look, resembling Li Siqin. But no matter what, a wife always looks better than her balding, broadbellied husband.
Chew Kok Chang
Brian organised for the body to be flown back.
Jolene Tan
The exhausted earth groaned and quivered under the monotonous glare of the sun. Spirals of heat rose from the ground as if from molten lava. A panting lizard crawled painfully over the fevered rock in search of a shady crevice. Cattle and dogs cringed under the scanty shade of the trees and waited for the rain to deliver them from the heat and thirst. Instead the heat grew more intense and oppressive each day, singeing and stifling all living things with an invisible sheet of fire, which only the rain could put out.The drought had persisted for over a month.
S. Rajaratnam
I mostly believe, deep in my bones, that life is very simply beyond description; regardless of what one makes of it, life always spills over the parameters of how anyone has chosen to define it.
Cyril Wong
Soon I find myself squatting on the floor. I am still striking my face; not with my fists this time, but with wide-open hands. I am slapping myself. The sounds I make when my palms meet my cheeks are like an unrelenting round of applause. I am clapping myself. Or clapping for myself. I start to giggle.All the voices are receding now. I am no longer filled with rage or disappointment. I clap and clap and simply cannot stop.
Cyril Wong
She remembered the way the damp, coarse sand had clumped to her legs and hands, and burrowed beneath her nails and into the folds of her clothes, and she had wondered why the British children in her storybooks were always excited about going to the beach—just as now she wondered why the light from the lighthouse seemed to be coming from the landward side of the expressway. “I thought a lighthouse is out at sea.
Yu-Mei Balasingamchow
Merdeka!' the Malay man screamed.'Merdekaaaaaa!' the sea of people echoed.
Mohamed Latiff Mohamed
There was something vaguely sad about the rock. It was as old as it looked, standing weathered and lonely amidst the stretch of sand, and its thoughts were quiet as it listened to the waves.
Chew Chia Shao Wei
But we will not bury our mother. We have no interest in putting her bones in soft ground, no desire for memorials and platitudes, no feelings attached to the organic detritus of her terminated existence.
J.Y. Yang
Any moment now, I thought, he was going to wake up. Any moment.
O Thiam Chin
She looked at me like I was stupid, the same look the girls in JC used to give me when I hadn’t heard of the latest boy band, or turned up at Zouk wearing unfashionable clothes.
Jeremy Tiang
One day, I decided to be an island. I took off my clothes and walked into the sea, then floated there, bobbing along with the tide, suspended by my inflatable tube and water wings.
Ng Yi-Sheng
I remember clearly the afternoon that she stood at the corner beside the door of the tourist centre in Gdansk.
You Jin
The four of us got back into the car. In an instant, I distinctly heard a “soundless music”. It was the melody of friendship, the sound of a perfectly tuned quartet who got together by chance, four hearts playing in harmony.
You Jin
Pak Karman hugged his wife’s gravestone tightly. “You left without saying farewell!” The whole of the graveyard was ablaze with light.
Mohamed Latiff Mohamed
They will try to ascribe a purpose to my death, as though it were a punishment, but don’t you do so, in order that I continue to live in all the shadows of your longing. I will always be in your sleep and your wakefulness. I will be with you praying, propitiating and yearning for you, in sadness, in sorrow, in dismay and in the most profound happiness.
Mohamed Latiff Mohamed
I think, therefore I am. My fingers that caress these rose and frangipani petals are a result of my thoughts. I feel content, tender. I feel entranced, ecstatic and besotted by the fragrance of the flowers and this is because of my thoughts.
Mohamed Latiff Mohamed
There's more to the erotic life than explicitness.
Jess C. Scott
They seemed to be together as one, somewhere else in a place that was lighter than air.
Jess C. Scott
Having random sex the way Tania did sounded kinda...hollow. I didn’t want to live in a Hollowland.
Jess C. Scott
Now? I'm just another female faking orgasms to make a man not feel so inadequate.
Jess C. Scott
Adrian had always found it amusing that a guy could be drilling Stacia up her ass while she considered herself to be a virgin. Her intent had been to present herself as such when she found "Mr. Right.
Jess C. Scott
Reality is seeing that the peace in a picture is a dream.
Lee Wen
That’s sad. How plastic and artificial life has become. It gets harder and harder to find something…real.” Nin interlocked his fingers, and stretched out his arms. “Real love, real friends, real body parts…
Jess C. Scott
Hate was the other side of love, wasn’t it? That’s what passion was like with her—to the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. We traveled to heaven and hell together. Earth wasn’t in the picture, and that was a problem.
Jess C. Scott
All I wanted was to share myself with him...in a love way, lust way, every kind of way.
Jess C. Scott
I am thinking of our family's womenas faraway bulbs, their historywith crippling loss, and how I am pieced together, shell and sand,from the spine of their collective strength.
Jerrold Yam
Coming home to someone is many things. It is a literal action, an abstract idea, a physical feeling. It is more than the sound of the key turning in the door and the voice that calls from the porch. It is a choice, a promise, a declaration. It is a return, not as a person to a place, but as oneself to another. It is one person saying to another person: You are the one I choose.
Tania De Rozario
You can never have too much money.
Jess C. Scott
She felt the cold blast from the sterile air conditioning on her bare arms and thighs, as she ambled down the center of the shopping complex's ground floor.The scene was a swirl of candy bright lights--the Victoria's Secret fuchsia signboard, signboards which lured one to purchase "confidence," or "sexual appeal," or whatever it was that was being advertised--the fluorescent lights in each store, contrasting with the shiny, black-tiled walls and eye-catching speckled marble tiles on the ground.One could lick the floor--the tiles were spotless, clean like the fake air she was breathing in, like the atoms and cells in her that were decaying in stale neglect.
Jess C. Scott
He knows how to market himself well. Nowadays, that's all that seems to count. He's rebellious in a way that appeals to people with vain, shallow taste. So of course he manipulates his audiences with the blessing of his recording company and the financial investors behind his brand.
Jess C. Scott
I had seen enough of Western courtship rituals to know European families did little to identify, research and arrange suitable marriages. Instead, to catch the attention of potential partners, Western males had to resort to shows of strength, aggression and virility, rather like wild boars in the mating season, and Western females had to decorate themselves and their homes, like bower birds.
Ovidia Yu
You may be married to a star, but that doesn't mean they'll treat you like one.
Jess C. Scott
It's weird, marriage. It's like this license that gives a person the legal right to control their spouse / their 'other half.
Jess C. Scott
There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.
Adrian Tan
You yearn to stay in this in-between place, where the beauty of the times you have freshly bade farewell to is still alive and vivid in your mind – almost real – and the reality of your new circumstances has yet to fully sink in. You listen to the familiar melodies that had accompanied you on your journey, and allow the music to evoke landscapes and scenes in your mind. The songs caress your sub-consciousness and fill your being with an airy joy. You are both here and elsewhere. Or perhaps you are everywhere and nowhere.
Agnes Chew
Moments later, I was climbing nervously into the back of the car. The driver wore the archetypal expression of an antagonist. No words were exchanged beyond the brief lines uttered to this nameless stranger, whose inclinations remained unclear. The car sped along empty roads and traversed dingy alleyways. Music blared from its speakers. I did not remember exhaling throughout the entire journey.
Agnes Chew