Here. Where I am anonymous and alone in a white room with no history and no parading. So I can make something unknown in the shape of this room. Where I am King of Corners.

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.

Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.

The Bible is the one book we’ve most succeeded in having them never read as a book. Keep it that way.

A book is as dangerous as any journey you might take. The person who closes the back cover may not be the same one that opened the front one. Treat them with respect.

What a blessed thing it is that nature when she invented manufactured and patented her audiors contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left!

For my own part, I would rather excel in knowledge of the highest secrets of philosophy than in arms.

Every teacher should realize the dignity of his calling.

In recognizing exactly where we have been unconscious, we become more conscious. And in seeing and feeling the ways we've gone dead, we start to revive and kindle our desire to live more expansively.

And why not?” “You know why! This is a bad idea.” “Perhaps I like a challenge.” “Perhaps you’re a glutton for punishment!” “Perhaps I am in love.

I do a lot of stuff in my career, but I like to keep a hand in horror.

Until higher institutions have been evolved, any attempt to break the old ones will be disastrous.