I'm a Canadian citizen. But I always want to feel at home in Sri Lanka. I'm a member of both countries.

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.

The courage of one can change the course of all.

Never judge a situation merely with a negative perspective. Look at the positive side too, ” he added. “And if you do that, you will eventually feel better.

Sorrows are like thunderclouds, in the distance they look black, over our heads scarcely gray.

I can give you high blood pressure just on the phone by criticizing you. On the other hand, I can send a tweet to somebody in China and give them a dopamine hit.

Get comfortable with the uncomfortable.

You always want to make the best film you can. If anything I feel more relaxed after the Oscar. I feel like I have a chance to just tell the stories I want to tell and it's actually been really nice.

The desert takes our dreams away from us, and they don't always return.

Cinema has reached a dead end.

It is a tiresome way of speaking, when you should despatch the business, to beat about the bush.

I believe in God, but in my own unconventional way. We're not affiliated with any organisation, and I have no religious education of any kind, but I definitely have my own kind of ideas about it.