“Relief brought an aching desire to be sitting in a kedai with a large bottle of Tiger or Anchor or Carlsberg in front of him….”

“I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”

“I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”

“Oh, Garrett, who do you think it was that brought the bottle to her?”

“Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache: the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the universe; of our desires forever outnumbering our means of satisfying them.”

“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”

“It had, perhaps, not been a very edifying life. On the booze in England, in India, in Malaya… And then a couple of gins for breakfast and then the first beers of the day in a kedai … He had been driven out of that Eden…because of his sinful desire to taste what was forbidden.”

“[M]others of large families (who claim to common sense)
Will find a Tiger well repay the trouble and expense.”

“Because watching him love Tiger Lily was better than not watching him at all.”

“As we say in Portugal, they brought the bus and they left the bus in front of the goal.”