“There's a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.”

“By the sense of mystery I understand the experience of certain places and times when one's whole nature seems to be in touch with a prescence, a genius loci, a potency.”

“Nothing's for certain, It could always go wrong, Come in when it's raining, Go on out when it's gone, We could have us a high time, Living the good life, Well I know”

“Departure' [also the title of a famous triptych painting of Max Beckmann], yes departure from the illusion of life toward the essential things that wait behind appearance... We must insist that Departure is not bound to a political trend, but is symbolic for all times.”

“They say the secret of success is being at the right place at the right time, but since you never know when the right time is going to be, I figure the trick is to find the right place and just hang around.”

“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.”

“Dawn, n. The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh.”

“It’s difficult to ever go back to the same places or people. You turn away, even for a moment, and when you turn back around, everything’s changed.”

“It is possible to be homesick for a place even when you are there.”

“(Singapore) is not even a place where a white man is permitted to go to pieces….”