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.

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.

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

Death means you are in the third person.

I was supposed to be waiting up here when you got back, only your Phoenix lot got in the way...”“Yes, they do that, ” said Dumbledore.

You find that you have peace of mind and can enjoy yourself, get more sleep, and rest when you know that it was a one hundred percent effort that you gave - win or lose.

Most of one's life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

I'm dealing with my drinking problem and I have a reputation for getting things done.

I consider myself a very lucky man indeed.

We are all mediators, translators.

Instagram was created because there was no single place dedicated to giving your mobile photos a place to live and to be seen.

Beef is the soul of cooking.

Our debt was too great and the words thank you too small.

I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I've been knocking from the inside.