There's more danger in the violence you don't face.

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.

Lord, I am willing to break MY heart that I might satisfy THY heart.

It's all right if people think we are idiots.It's all right if we lie face down on the earth.It's all right if we open the coffin and climb in.

I'm starting with the man in the mirror

Friends are folks who excuse you when you have made a fool of yourself.

From a distance it is something and nearby it is nothing.

Our idea is to serve everybody, including people with little money.

I don't see myself as an icon, because I just wear whatever I want to wear.

When I was a kid in Adelaide, I dreamed of becoming No. 1 in the world, winning a grand slam and the Davis Cup for Australia.

I try to manage my day by my circadian rhythms because the creativity is such an elusive thing, and I could easily just stomp over it doing my administrative stuff.

Everybody generalizes from one example. At least, I do.