When I read biographies, I skip the first thirty pages about the childhood because it doesn't seem interesting to me.

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.

The artist speaks with inspiring tools of creativity. Thinkers challenge with the weapons of choice. These two forces are necessary to move souls beyond limitation.

To heed the discovery is the key

We have a complex system of government. You have to teach it to every generation.

It is, of course, traditional in children's literature to get rid of the parents.

I had years of partying, and I was kind of surprised and happy I survived it all. Now, being a parent, I look back on it thinking, Oh God, the things you did!

If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?

We do not choose suffering simply because we are told to, but because the one who tells us to describes it as the path to everlasting joy.

I don't believe in coincidence. I just think that all things work together for good.

Unannounced changes in life's itinerary are like dancing lessons from God.

I don't really want to do things that I feel like are going to send out a message that I don't really want to sign up for.