Most of the time in our world, truth is just opinion.

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.

Life is short. The sooner that a man begins to enjoy his wealth the better.

If penicillin can cure those that are ill, Spanish sherry can bring the dead back to life.

People ask me, "How do I succeed?" Whatever it is they do, I say, "Go and find 20 ways of messing it up. By 21, you'll be getting there." Life is an adventure, go back with cuts, scars and bruises.

There is no suicide for which all society is not responsible.

Art is about the dynamics of the human experience.

So for us any gain we had in election, one vote that we got, was a win.

I look at my older writing to see where my weaknesses are and then I try to address those weaknesses and make new mistakes.

There is no greater thing two friends can do for each other than simply to be each other's friends.

He can't fly around tall buildings, or outrun a speeding train, the only talent he seems to have is leaving a nasty stain!

I couldn't write about love without writing about hate - specifically, how the experience of hatred embeds itself in the body and prevents love from entering or leaving.