The Desire for Elsewhere Quotes

“You yearn to stay in this in-between place, where the beauty of the times you have freshly bade farewell to is still alive and vivid in your mind – almost real – and the reality of your new circumstances has yet to fully sink in. You listen to the familiar melodies that had accompanied you on your journey, and allow the music to evoke landscapes and scenes in your mind. The songs caress your sub-consciousness and fill your being with an airy joy. You are both here and elsewhere. Or perhaps you are everywhere and nowhere.”
― Agnes Chew, The Desire for Elsewhere

“I have a habit of being an archaeologist of my own past, a sentimental collector of personal artefacts which may at first glance appear random, but each of which holds a unique significance. As the years pass me by, I find that the number of objects within my possession begins to accumulate. A torn map. A sealed letter. A boat full of paper animals. Each item encapsulates within itself a story, akin to an outward manifestation of my inner journey.”
― Agnes Chew, The Desire for Elsewhere

“[T]he hallmark of a true traveller lies not in the number of places one has visited, but rather in one's ability to travel with one's imagination - to be able to employ a myriad of lenses through which to perceive the world, to find beauty and charm in things of quotidian, and most of all to render the familiar unfamiliar, and to transform what was once pedestrian into which is scintillating, stirring, and capable of intoxication”
― Agnes Chew, The Desire for Elsewhere

“Moments later, I was climbing nervously into the back of the car. The driver wore the archetypal expression of an antagonist. No words were exchanged beyond the brief lines uttered to this nameless stranger, whose inclinations remained unclear. The car sped along empty roads and traversed dingy alleyways. Music blared from its speakers. I did not remember exhaling throughout the entire journey.”
― Agnes Chew, The Desire for Elsewhere

“[D]eath serves as a sobering reminder of our limited time on this Earth, thereby compelling us to endeavour to leave behind not insipid, uninspiring lives, but rather true manifestations of our ideas in their tangible forms, whose permanence can far outlive our own.”
― Agnes Chew, The Desire for Elsewhere

“Were we all to create and curate a museum illustrating the essence of our beings, how might each one of these museums look like? Each article cradled within the museum’s walls, perceived through the eyes of the visitor as so plainly ordinary, in fact wields the power to evoke intense emotions redolent of lost loves, if we only ventured to uncover their stories.”
― Agnes Chew, The Desire for Elsewhere

“One of the hardest things in life is the act of saying goodbye. If only it were as simple as saying goodbye for now, and see you again. Would it still be the same you I see, the next time we meet? Or the same me, for that matter? For to part with a person or place often also means having to say goodbye to a particular state of being or phase in you life.”
― Agnes Chew, The Desire for Elsewhere

“When I was a child, a teacher once said that there existed 195 countries in the world. Astronomers lay claim to there being eight planets in our solar system, of the hundreds of solar systems that lie in our galaxy, of the billions of galaxies that exist in our single universe. On still nights when sleep forgets to steal me away, I think about all the worlds that have yet to be discovered by astronomers – vast, immense worlds that continue to remain hidden within each and every one of us; vast, immense worlds that continue to escape the consciousness of others.”
― Agnes Chew, The Desire for Elsewhere

“For every reality that is, there exists a hundred other parallel realities. Which on we perceive depends therefore on how we choose to see.”
― Agnes Chew, The Desire for Elsewhere

“We are born travellers. We travel each and every day. Some of us travel along the pulsating blood vessels of the vicinity in which we live, while others, along the pathways that their thoughts lead them, oftentimes entering into invisible worlds, displaced from reality. I do not know about you, but I am a traveller of both tendencies. I am both here and elsewhere. I often travel to my past, to distant alternate universes, and to the elusive future. These are voyages fuelled by a sense of nostalgia, possibility, and hope. These are places that run on lost time, missed opportunities, and deep-rooted aspirations.”
― Agnes Chew, The Desire for Elsewhere

“There are so many worlds we leave behind throughout the course of our lifetimes. I have often asked in futile indignation: how could our physical beings be here, when our hearts remain in another world, another life, another time – where we truly belong? The heart fights a valiant battle. Yet, it eventually finds itself bowing to the ineluctable reality of the farewell.

Life goes on. In our worlds. In the worlds of whom we have departed. Most of all, in the worlds we have left behind, in which part of us still lives on – forevermore.”
― Agnes Chew, The Desire for Elsewhere