" As though to fortify me she took the letter out and placed it on the table between us. Its pages were folded, yellowed like old skin, the faint tattoo of aged ink that had seeped onto the blank side visible to me. Just like me, I thought, looking at the letter. The life I had lived was folded, only a blank page exposed to the world, emptiness wrapped round the days of my life; faint traces of it could be discerned, but only if you looked closely, very closely. "

― Tan Twan Eng , The Gift of Rain