Death means you are in the third person.

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.

I have the biggest sweet tooth. After the holidays, I gotta start working out.

New England oysters are better than Chesapeake. But Chesapeake blue crabs are unbeatable.

A mistake is only an error, it becomes a mistake when you fail to correct it

... if you're going to wear a dress like that you need to wear it with confidence. You need to fill it out mentally as well as physically.

I relate to hustlers who want to get out of where they are and create something different for themselves.

It's very dangerous to mix up the words natural and habitual. We have been trained to be quite habitual at communicating in ways that are quite unnatural.

Every builder builds somewhat for unknown purposes, and is in a measure a prophet.

We must never promise ourselves any more than God has promised us.

Think what we would have missed if we had never ... used a mobile phone or surfed the Net -- or, to be honest, listened to other people talking about surfing the Net.

My first world title gave me the confidence to go and do bigger and better things.