I've always loved history and history is collage, it is a juxtaposition of the good and the bad and the strange, and how you place those sentences together changes the whole mood of a history.

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.

Sometimes the only way to gain someone's favor is to stop giving them yours.

When it comes to beauty, I'm all about lashes right now.

There are a lot of questions that come out of the silence. It is so close to the infinite.

At the same time, I went through college, received a Ph.D. and started to teach. I wrote books.

Banning capital punishment takes us to a higher state of consciousness.

Luck is earned. Luck is working so hard at your craft, service or enterprise that sooner or later you get a break.

I mean, I haven't been completely lacking in some enjoyment of Chuck Berry or Buddy Holly. But I just didn't pay attention to that period of music, obviously.

Wickedly funny to read and morally bracing as only good satire can be.

Why was everyone dying? They had all been so alive just yesterday.