When you're writing, it's as if you're within a kind of closed world.

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.

Pure mind.Pure body.Pure spirit.

To disbelieve is easy

The law is not meant to be obeyed only when it favors you and you are comfortable with it, it is also to be obeyed when it does not favor you or you're not comfortable with it.

And we have a little herb garden, which survived the winter thanks to global warming. It makes me feel like a cool, old Italian housewife, that I kept my rosemary alive outside all winter.

One of the things that fascinated me about modeling was that you had the freedom to look any way you wanted.

The books are the books, and a lot of the stuff is some version of your id or your ego.

I know that once I get a good rhythm and a good feel, no one can stop me.

The anonymity of the city is one of its strengths as well as - carried too far - one of its weaknesses.

You don’t create your future. You create your daily habits, and they create your future.

My job as the writer is to fool you. Your job as the reader is to see if you can catch me at it.