We are expanded by tears, we are told, not reduced by them.

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 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.

Death means you are in the third person.

I have an amazing metabolism. I'm sure that'll be gone one day. But I like to exercise, too, so I don't think I'll ever get really fat.

Stupidity is a talent for misconception.

For it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.

When money is once parted with, it can never return.

With a sort of mental squint.

European standards of beauty are something that plague the entire world - the idea that darker skin is not beautiful, that light skin is the key to success and love. Africa is no exception.

I don't love everything I do, and I don't always like how I am in it. I'm not always pleased.

Women need opportunity and encouragement. If a girl can climb mountains, she can do anything positive within her field of work.

Stop killing your brothers and your sisters and help them out in any difficulty. That's my message.

How is a woman to tell the story of her life and not stumble upon men?