the heart is an organ of fire

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.

At leadership levels, consider choosing your managers as much as the role. Your success is closely linked to how you manage this relationship strategically!

Take a few minutes.""No. He's already had more of my time than he was entitled to."Yes, he thought as she walked out of his office. Very much like her grandmother.

Because in some men, it is in them to give up everything personal at some time, before it ferments and poisons - throw it to some human being or some human idea.

A story conducted by the time of a clock and calendars alone would be a story not of human beings but of mechanical toys.

You can only depend on yourself. The cavalry aint coming.

Life is supplied with a basic adequacy.

The loudest one in the room is the weakest one in the room.

We do stigmatise teens a lot and see them as scary and alien.

But the thing I felt most strongly about, and put at the end of one of the prison diaries, was education.

Even a stopped clock is right twice every day. After some years, it can boast of a long series of successes.