As a writer, one is busy with archaeology.

She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.

That's Anil's path. She grows up in Sri Lanka, goes and gets educated abroad, and through fate or chance gets brought back by the Human Rights Commission to investigate war crimes.

Everyone has to scratch on walls somewhere or they go crazy

The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.

We are expanded by tears, we are told, not reduced by them.

We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to untie.

The joyful will stoop with sorrow, and when you have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion

There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross.

For the first forty days a child is given dreams of previous lives. Journeys, winding paths, a hundred small lessons and then the past is erased.

A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands, knowing it is something that feeds him more than water.

A rich and mature life involves opening up to a wider world. If we base our understanding of life only on what we personally experience, we are impoverished indeed.

Get someone-anyone-to read books to you. Having books read to you at any age is the supremo ultimato of living.

Come to West Virginia and we'll show you how to live... how to treat people. We're open for business. West Virginia is truly on the move.

One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian.

It matters only that you manifest your genius; it doesn’t matter when. It’s never too late or too early.

Everything is minimal, and if it's over, it's over. We're abrupt with things: in and out. Especially if it's an overdub - it's gone. It does something that's not real.

Persistence and love of one's work is the key.

To myself alone do I owe my fame. [Fr., Je ne dois qu'a moi seul toute ma renommee.]

One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom anpther's folly.

People are far more protective [of women] instinctively.