“As he walked home with Karl, Adam did not think about the drawing, or about Karl’s embarrassment at having been discovered. He was merely thankful to have avoided a reprimand for having skipped school. But now he recalls experiencing a quite distinct feeling, something more powerful than relief: that of being forgiven. He does not know why he felt like this, because he had, in retrospect, committed no great crime. He only knows that life with Karl amounted to one long act of forgiveness. It was as if he was being excused all the nameless things he had done wrong, all the things he could not remember.”
— Tash Aw, Map of the Invisible World
“Margaret looked at Adam’s face, so much older now than it had been a few days ago, but still that of a boy. It was this ridiculous thing called hope that kept it that way, but she could see it changing, the hope ebbing away slowly. Soon he would be a man, and quickly, inexorably, old. It was what happened when hope slipped away from your clutches. In certain isolated near-Stone Age tribes in Irian, Margaret had seen how the ageing process was far less defined. People did not blossom in adolescence then fade painfully into old age; they were born elderly, mature before their years — child-adults — but then they seemed to remain this way, their faces permanently etched with the quizzical smile of an infant, even as their hair became flecked with grey. It was because they were not programmed to hope, to look forward to some magical potential, and so did not degenerate as the boundaries of their lives shrank with age.”
— Tash Aw, Map of the Invisible World
“She wished that when she was a child she’d known how it felt to fail and to have someone to say, It’s OK, next time it won’t be so bad, you can try again, it doesn’t matter.”
— Tash Aw, Map of the Invisible World
“There are some things that cause you pain, that lodge themselves in your consciousness the way a splinter or piece of shrapnel might embed itself in your flesh; but the human body had a way of dealing with it that could dull the pain so that you didn’t feel it after a while. Your life would continue as usual, and only you would know of this thing that you carried in your body.”
— Tash Aw, Map of the Invisible World
“[W]hen you don’t know the truth you can’t be happy, not truly.”
— Tash Aw, Map of the Invisible World
“There were presents, like an old pair of socks or box of biscuits or a toy that some rich city kid did not want any more but you did not know better, and when you do not know better you are happy for what you have.”
— Tash Aw, Map of the Invisible World
“If someone stays with you often it is painful when they go away. But that is all it is. Pain. When someone is there next to you every second of the day and night their sudden absence does not cause pain, it creates a vacuum, an emptiness with which you have to live every day thereafter. So it is not painful; it is worse than pain.”
— Tash Aw, Map of the Invisible World
“His brother was older and stronger than he; his brother had left the orphanage first, leaving Adam alone. And those moments of aloneness were filled with a blankness that seemed to expand all the time, until he found he was not terrified by it but reassured by its constant presence.”
— Tash Aw, Map of the Invisible World
“Sad memories remain longer than others. But sometimes the sadness makes things clearer, and with clarity comes a certain calm.”
— Tash Aw, Map of the Invisible World
“She waited for him to say something else, but there was nothing but birdsong. They remained sitting on the steps for some time, looking at the dancing lights across the valley and listening to the solitary bird. Margaret could feel the warmth of his arm — almost, but not quite, against hers, the fine hairs on his forearm tickling her skin; but she could feel him slipping away from her, easing himself out of her life. She felt the constrictions in her chest come back once more and tried to suppress the urge to cough. I am not in love with this man, she said to herself, I am not in love with him. She hoped that she would feel herself fall out of love with him, just as he was falling out of her world, but that sensation would not come to her.”
— Tash Aw, Map of the Invisible World
“The truth may be painful, but it’s better than an illusion.”
— Tash Aw, Map of the Invisible World
“Things change so quickly, and once they’ve changed they never change back. It’s not true that people leave things or places behind — it’s the things and places that leave us behind.”
— Tash Aw, Map of the Invisible World
“Maybe this was what happened as one became older: the tiny incidents of youth acquired a magnitude they did not really possess. ‘Never, ever trust your memory,’ her mother used to tell her, ‘it never gives you what you want. When you go back to it, hoping for solace, all you get is misery. And when you need to use it as a library, purely for information, it’s always blank. Just leave it all behind and concentrate on the present.’”
— Tash Aw, Map of the Invisible World
“[B]oth parties make every effort to be happy, yet this pretence of great happiness leaves them feeling empty and lost, for each thinks: I should know what it is like to be this happy, but I do not.”
— Tash Aw, Map of the Invisible World
“He was just someone who was alone in a barren place. But maybe that was what it meant to be a madman. Perhaps being really, truly alone in a desolate world meant that you were mad, because you could not understand this world that belonged to others.”
— Tash Aw, Map of the Invisible World
