Half a page--and the morning is already ancient.

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.

Electric cars aren't pollution-free; they have to get their energy from somewhere.

It is an error to suppose that courage means courage in everything. Most people are brave only in the dangers to which they accustom themselves, either in imagination or practice.

If we could see that everything, even tragedy, is a gift in diguise, we would then find the best way to nourish the soul.

Remember that how you say something is as important as what you say.

You can hesitate before deciding, but not once the decision is made.

From now back to antiquity, its (Tao's) name has not been lost. Thereby, see the origin of all.

I have to say that I think that Anthony Eden was probably the most disastrous Prime Minister in our history, and I am not forgetting Lord North and a few people like that.

A person is said to have good character when their habits, dispositions and conduct reflect a deep commitment to ethical virtues and moral principles.

There's no better tonic for other people's bad ideas, than to think for oneself.

Cassius and Brutus were the more distinguished for that very circumstance that their portraits were absent. [Lat., Praefulgebant Cassius atque Brutus eo ipso, quod effigies eorum non videbantur.]