But we were interested in how our lives could mean something to the past. We sailed into the past.

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.

This is how I disappear in pieces.This is how I leave without moving from my place.This is how I dance away.This is how I'm gone before you wake.

Confronted with such flagrant acts of intolerance—such abuses of the freedom of speech—a free society must surely do more. For intolerance is the one thing a free society cannot afford to tolerate.

Nothing which implies contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God.

When governments claim to derive their authority from any source other than the governed, it always leads to the destruction of liberty.

A parent can give a child no greater gift than beautiful manners.

Bars are meeting places and places to unwind. But at some point, what is culture unwinding from, and why can't they meet anywhere else?

I've been very active in Missouri.

Maybe if I go far enough back into my ancestry, I have African roots or something. I've got no idea

The truth is, the more kind and liberal a man is, the more generous will be the patronage bestowed upon him.

Compassion is a quality which impels one to perform sacrifices.