I NEED TO WASH MYSELF AGAIN, TO HIDE ALL THE DIRT AND PAIN, CAUSE I'D BE SCARED THAT THERE'S NOTHING UNDERNEATH / BUT WHO ARE MY REAL FRIENDS? HAVE THEY ALL GOT THE BENDS? AM I REALLY SINKING THIS LOW?
“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 towards the morning light of remembrance.”
— Tan Twan Eng, from The Garden of Evening Mists (Myrmidon, 2011)
“I’m looking for something and I don’t quite know what it is. But I know that it’s very important for me to know it, and if I did it would make all the difference. Perhaps the nuns know it; when I’m with them I feel that they hold a secret which they will not share with me.”
— W. Somerset Maugham, excerpt from The Painted Veil