Once I've discovered the story, I might restructure it, maybe move things around, set up a clue that something is going to happen later, but that happens much later in an editorial capacity.

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.

The only way to be inclined to write is to write to your inclination.

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.

All the joys in all the worlds of all beings who have ever been or will ever be, will never equal the perfection of one moment of absorption into the stillness of nirvana.

Music, art, theater. I'm just a big fan of beauty.

By saying you don’t care if the world falls apart, in some small way you’re saying you want it to stay together, on your own terms.

Whatever your trials, remind yourself that you are a spirit and are capable of changing your destiny.

Putting out commercial pieces and promoting them and trying to sell them to people is not necessarily what it means to be an artist

I love my fans, I could not be able to do it without you and I would not be here.

Terrorism is not new to black people.

Senators are a never-ending source of amusement, amazement, and discouragement.