She suspected that her words only ever reached him and that way, encoded, that he lived in a world closed to her, one she must approach gingerly and respectfully. She had experienced so much sorrow of her own, so much of life, that she knew better than to press for access to his places of refuge. She had witnessed herself how individuals became prisoners of these strongholds, or their loneliness, confined therein until their dying day. She had hope that Tin Win would learn what she had learned over the years: that there are wounds time does not heal, though it can reduce them to a manageable size. Page 77
His principal aim was to pass on the lesson life had taught him: that a person's greatest treasure is the wisdom in his own heart. Page 115
We see that there is no place on earth where we can hide from fear, yet still we attempt to find one. We strive for wealth and power. We abandon ourselves to the illusion that we are stronger than fear. We try to rule - over our children and our wives, over our neighbors and our friends. Ambition and fear have something in common: neither knows any limits. But with power and wealth it is just as with the opium I sampled more than once in my youth - neither keeps its promises. Opium never brought me eternal happiness. It only demanded more and more of me. Money and power do not vanquish fear. There's only one force more powerful than fear. Page 125
He didn't know whether he had stumbled over a stone, a root, or a rut cut into the earth by the rain. He knew only that he had committed the most foolhardy of blunders: overconfidence. He had ceased to be attentive. He had set one foot in front of the other without concentrating, absent-mindedly. Page 140
He seemed to think anyone was capable of anything, or at least he wouldn't exclude the possibility just because he thought he knew the person. And he insisted that this did not represent the worldview of an embittered pessimist. On the contrary, he had said. It would be much worse to expect good from other people, only to be disappointed when they didn't measure up to our high expectations. That would lead to resentment and contempt for humanity. Page 156
Over time they established a fixed ritual for unlocking the secrets of this new world. Having taken a few steps, they would pause, silent and motionless. Their silence might last a few minutes, half an hour, or even longer. Tin Win was soaking up the sounds, tones, and noise. Then he would describe in detail what he heard, and Mi Mi would tell him what she saw. Like a painter she sketched the scene for him, at first roughly, then with increasing precision and detail. When images and tones did not coincide they launched a search for the sources of the unfamiliar sounds. She crawled through hedgerows and bushes, dragged herself across flower beds and under houses, took apart stone walls and put them back together. She rummaged through wood piles and dug with her hands in meadows and fields until she found what Tin Win heard: sleeping snakes and snails, earthworms, moths. With each passing day Tin Win came to know the world better. Thanks to Mi Mi's descriptions, he could connect sounds with objects, plants, and animals. He learned that the wing beats of a swallowtail butterfly sounded brighter than those of a monarch; that the leaves of a mulberry tree rustled differently in the wind from those of the guava; that the chomping of a wood worm was not to be confused with that of a caterpillar; that the rubbing of hind legs was distinct from fly to fly. It was a whole new alphabet. Page 178
Whence this magic? I could not understand a single word they sang. What was it that affected me so? How can a person be moved to tears by something she can neither see, understand, nor hold on to, a mere sound that vanishes almost the moment it comes into being? Music, my father often said, was the only reason he could sometimes believe in a god or in any heavenly power. Page 234
Because we see only what we already know. We project our own capacities - for good as well as evil - onto the other person. Then we acknowledge as love primarily those things that correspond to our own image thereof. We wish to be loved as we ourselves would love. Any other way makes us uncomfortable. We respond with doubt and suspicion. We misinterpret the signs. We do not understand the language. We accuse. We assert that the other person does not love us. But perhaps he merely loves us and some idiosyncratic way that we fail to recognize. I hope you will understand what I mean once I have finished my story. Pages 243 - 244
She longed for Tin Win, too, but she did not suffer from a broken heart. It marks a face forever, that pain, but Mi Mi never experienced it. Her features never hardened, not even in old age. It may seem difficult to understand, Julia, but physical distance or proximity we're really irrelevant to her. I have often wondered what was the source of her beauty, her radiance. It's not the size of one's nose, the color of one's skin, the shape of one's lips or eyes that make one beautiful or ugly. So what is it? Can you, as a woman, tell me? I shook my head. I will tell you: It's love. Love makes us beautiful. Do you know a single person who loves and is loved, who is loved unconditionally and who, at the same time, is ugly? There's no need to ponder the question. There is no such person. He poured tea and took a sip. Page 290
Must one have seen the world? In this village, in every house, in every shack, you will find the entire range of human emotions: love and hate, fear and jealousy, envy and joy. You needn't go looking for them. I looked at him and was moved by the sight: a little man, dressed in rags, with stumps for teeth, who with a bit of luck might just as easily have been a professor with a luxurious apartment in Manhattan or house in some London suburb. Which of us had lost perspective? Was it me with my demands or him with his modesty? I was not sure what I felt for him. It wasn't pity. It was a curious kind of affection. I wanted to shelter him even while I knew very well that he had no need of my protection. At the same time, I felt secure - cozy, almost - in his company. As if he were shielding me from something. I trusted him. Until then I had thought you needed to know a person in order to like him or feel close to him. Page 296
The question why, the search for a cause of death, is too great a luxury under such circumstances. My wife died in the night. I woke up in the morning and found her dead next to me. That's all I know. Page 315
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