The Coroner's Lunch Quotes
"In the jargon of the Marxist-Leninists, the sessions were known as ‘burden-sharing tutorials’. But after the first hour in front of Judge Haeng’s warped plywood desk, Dr Siri’s burden had become more weighty."
"Siri wondered more than once whether he was deliberately being asked trick questions to establish the state of his mind."
"Of course, the fact that the poor man’s legs had been cut off above the knees might have had something to do with it."
"After seventy-two years, he’d seen so many hardships that he’d reached the calmness of an astronaut bobbing about in space."
"There was nothing fake or added or subtracted about him. He was all himself."
"Although he wasn’t much better at Buddhism than he was at communism, he seemed able to meditate himself away from anger."
"Revolutionary consciousness is maintained beneath the brilliance of the beam from the socialist lighthouse."
"He passed schoolchildren in scrubbed white shirts and itchy red scarves. They seemed baffled by their day, too confused to giggle or mess around. Siri felt the same."
"Siri’s dream world had always been bizarre. In his childhood, the images that lurked there constantly interrupted his sleep."
"Since Siri had started working as a coroner, coming into contact with the bodies of people he hadn’t known when alive, these visitations had become more profound."
"He marvelled again at the magic of dreams, his dreams, and chuckled to think that one of his inmates might have been trying to escape."
"That communism was the only way man could be truly content; and that man, given his selfish ways, could never practise communism with any success."
"Nothing really tasted fresh any more. But with all the diseases he’d been exposed to over the years, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference to his health."
"Don’t let us down. Don’t stop the machine, Siri."
"Siri, suddenly depressed, explained to his wheel that he had to go pee."
"But there was always one sandwich with extras, wrapped in greaseproof paper, waiting for her very special customer to collect every day."
"The romance she sought wasn’t to be had here in the morgue. It wasn’t to be found in the single room she shared with her sick mother, and probably it wasn’t in Laos at all."
"When the old papaya tree stops bearing tasty fruit, you plant new shoots. You don’t wait for it to die first."
"Take a few breaths, Mr Geung. Nothing is important enough to suffocate for."
"In some aspects I am slower than other people, but in others I am superior."
"Don't be afraid. We need more people with the courage to say what they feel. It's getting rarer."
"You're just saying that because I went nutty. You don't have to do—"
"For a man in his seventies, any stimulation, should it be kind enough to offer itself, had to be grasped in both hands."
"Anyone crossing the river illegally, unless they were stone deaf, could easily hide themselves until the armour-plated craft chugged on by."
"It's starting to look like somebody wants this case closed in a hurry. We, my children, are no longer common coroners. We are investigators of death."
"A soldier may kill a thousand of the enemy in battle and not feel a thing. But the death of one innocent man lodges itself in the conscience forever."
"Visiting dignitaries don’t go anywhere near morgues; and if by some miracle they did, they’d be struck by the compassion our great and farsighted republic shows by hiring three minority groups to work together in the same office."
"There are allies and there are allies, Siri. There’s how we see them and how they see themselves."
"Even though I happen to know you got this position because of your relatives, you undoubtedly have skills, otherwise they wouldn’t have taken the chance with you."
"I’m seventy-two years old. I’m twenty-two years beyond the national life expectancy. I’ve exceeded. I’m on overtime."
"Basically, there’s nothing you can do to me to fill me with even a smidgen of dread."
"It wouldn’t even be much of a loss to end up in front of a firing squad."
"That’s why it’s called the Communist ‘Party’, and not the Communist ‘sit down and get some work done’."
"I just feel, I don’t know…I feel that if something’s so clear-cut that I can work it out, there obviously wasn’t that much effort spent on trying to cover it up."
"We’re both quite certain they didn’t die from drowning."
"The more advisers we allow in, the more Hanoi sees us as an appendage."
"Siri went to see Kumsing in the project office that he shared with five enlisted men. He was sitting at a far desk, the smallest desk in the office. Siri noticed how the thin man twitched as he worked and wondered whether the tic was a result of the stress he was under."
"The only other option was, indeed, that someone had used a toxin that left no obvious signs."
"Superstition, religion, and custom often overlapped in Laos, and even Siri, who had no spiritual beliefs, found nothing strange about such a practice."
"He took the captain outside and explained what he’d found and what he hadn’t. They walked together across the clearing. Even in Vientiane, Siri had never seen so much earth-moving equipment in one place."
"The jeep came to pick Siri up after ten. The guards had called through to headquarters earlier and warned them that the doctor was acting oddly."
"Spiritual wounds don’t leave scars, Yeh Ming."
"I can't. For some reason I know I shouldn't. There's something wrong here."
"I hope the Phibob is finished with you, but it's a wicked spirit, an amalgam of many malevolent souls."
"Thank goodness for that. Feed me, my sweetness."
"I'm a man of science and I have not one sensible explanation for what I went through."
"Just think how interesting the world will be from now on."
"You don't have to hurry back. You could stay and rest up for a day or two."
"How could I not be? I'm a man of science and I have not one sensible explanation for what I went through."
"What I'm hoping is that this will all go away once I leave Khamuan."
"Afraid of going back down to the ground, more like."
"Life on earth's just the entrance examination."
"Sleeping, mostly. You breathed in about a kilo of dust last night while you were being a hero."
"Talking gave Siri problems, and he had to take gulps of oxygen from time to time."
"I was hoping that was one of the imaginary disasters."
"I thought you were a doctor. I hope you don’t believe in such rot."
"This is a very serious matter, and I want it resolved before it becomes an international incident."
"In this new society, ambition will only get you in trouble."
"It’s called a spirit. Your mummy’s spirit has left her package already."
"The Lao have a remarkable talent for enjoyment."
"Peacetime was far more violent and chaotic than war."
"If you could reach your ear, you were old enough to start school."
"Something about the visit and his own tentative grasp on life encouraged him to be uncommonly honest."
"I was hoping to offload Miss Vong on you. Now I’m stuck with her."