Meanwhile with the help of an anecdote I fell in love. Words caravaggio. They have a power.

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.

Say your heart out.. work that dream out.. for the time won't be back again.

There is no shame in not knowing your history, the shame lies in not finding out.

Live for yourself. Love those around you - but realise they have their own agendas.

Water is the ink that writes the poetry of life.

ROTC programs at Ivy League campuses would liberalize the military. That can only be good for this country.

America will not reject abortion until America sees abortion.

I am telling you that the child will not out live the buildings. Do you understand that wheras women may touch the immortal by giving birth, men--great men-- must build monuments and seek fame?

To Love is to be God. Never will a Lover's chest feel any sorrow. Never will a Lover's robe be touched by mortals. Never will a Lover's body be found buried in the earth. To Love is to be God.

A job training center is not gonna train anybody for the future. What trains somebody for the future is education and passion and desire.

It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.