Tan Twan Eng said this quote

Paraphrasing Yeats: It was as the Irish poet had written, a waste of breath, the years that had gone past, the years to come. There was only the present moment to live and die in. [ref. An Irish Airman Foresees His Death ...The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death. W.B. Yeats

~ 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

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

It is getting dark. In the low mists over the hills, an orange glow broods, as if the trees are on fire. Bats are flooding out from the hundreds of caves that perforate these mountainsides. I watch them plunge into the mists without any hesitation, trusting in the echoes and silences in which they fly.Are all of us the same, I wonder, navigating our lives by interpreting the silences between words spoken, analyzing 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