Before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting.

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.

We are constantly invited to be what we are.

In ancient Greece, the word for "cook, " "butcher, " and "priest" was the same -- mageiros -- and the word shares an etymological root with "magic.

Many men have children, but not many children have 'Fathers'. Age releases to you reproductive skills. Fatherhood requires LEADERSHIP skills

All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God.

We attract vibrations which are in harmony with the dominating vibrations of their mind.

Consideration for others is the basis of a good life, a good society.

Which is the most universal human characteristic: fear, or laziness?

Get through the agony and anger, the pain and strife, and take the necessary steps to try to change my life.

May be we are not such fools as we look. But though we be, we are well content, so long as we may be two fools together.

Happiness is secured through virtue; it is a good attained by man's own will.