Over the years, confusing fragments, lost corners of stories, have a clearer meaning when seen in a new light, a different place.

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.

Everybody wants to be somebody fancy. Even if they're shy.

I belong here, I tell Toy. I'm hungry for every city block. Every brick building. Every crowded intersection. Electric. I feel brand new.

When you have the worst disaster in American history, you've got to be attuned to expectations,.

In politics, as in life, we must above all things wish only for the attainable.

Mike Hammer drinks beer because I can't spell Cognac.

Didn't know what I was doing but I put on a cape Now it's which world tour should I go on & take

Speaking of Sonya...I was thinking of something earlier. Something Wolfe said." "Why, Adrian. Were you paying attention after all?" "Don't start,Sage," he warned.(p 211)

Although I'm living in California, I'm very proud to be British.

Brave, bold men, these are what we want. What we want is vigour in the blood, strength in the nerves, iron muscles and nerves of steel, not softening namby-pamby ideas.

Change what you can, accept what you can't, and be smart enough to know the difference